


between a rock and a dorm room window

by serenfire



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bottom Geralt, Crack, F/F, Geralt Just Wants Some Peace and Quiet, Hair Pulling, Jaskier is a Klutz and a Dolt, M/M, Nudes, Online Dating, Online Dating Profiles Without Face Pics Have Never Surprised Anyone, Roommates, Slow Burn, That Dildo Comes In Handy, The Succulents, Weed Turned Out to Be More of a Plot Point Than Expected, oh my god they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:02:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22193749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenfire/pseuds/serenfire
Summary: To think Jaskier was daydreaming just yesterday about living next to another cool and suave human being who might actually like him, for the first time in his life.Ah, well. He’ll settle for property damage instead.(Or: Through events that arenot Jaskier's fault, his college roommate hates him. At least Jaskier can drown his sorrows and unrequited love through sexting an anonymous online dating profile nicknamed the Wisher.)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 394
Kudos: 1480





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i swear the following events did not happen to me my first day at college. you can’t prove anything.

Jaskier’s worst nightmare is throwing a rock through that goddamn window, but he’s left no choice.

It’s the middle of August and the weather here is already so cold, so much colder than home, and all Jaskier’s wearing is threadbare basketball shorts and a faded middle school band camp t-shirt, and he’s shivering. He’s been here five minutes and he’s already shivering.

In his defense, it is two a.m. And it’s just his luck that he arrives the only night a college campus is dark at this hour, because everyone else had, y’know, boarded their flights on time and not been delayed and rerouted through Boise and rode what seemed like the only Uber from the airport here after another half hour of waiting. But Jaskier is here. He is at college! He is excited for his bright future!

And he’s about to throw a rock through his dorm room window.

“Come on,” he mutters to himself. “There’s gotta be another way.”

He digs into his pocket and pulls out his phone, holding steady at 12%, and double-checks the dorm room arrival information hurriedly emailed to him when it was made clear he wouldn’t arrive during any planned orientation hours. This is the correct dorm building, and if he can count to four (which he can), then he has pinpointed the exact outward location of his dorm room, within which his roommate should be sound asleep.

To think Jaskier was daydreaming just yesterday about living next to another cool and suave human being who might actually like him, for the first time in his life.

Ah, well. He’ll settle for property damage instead.

Jaskier lobs the pebble at the window and hopes it doesn’t shatter.

True to the realistic estimation of his arm strength, it just bounces off, though it clangs loudly when it does.

Jaskier may or may not do a little fist pump.

He freezes even further, waiting for someone to show in the dorm room window.

What will his roommate look like? Will he be greeted by a weird frat dude who wears a snapback to sleep? Jaskier kind of hopes so. He wants an in on any rangers going on this year—not that it matters right now.

No roommate appears in the window. Jaskier sighs and bends down, his absolutely freezing knees screaming at him, and he grabs another handful of rocks.

He looks back at the window and aims very carefully. He aims so carefully that he doesn’t notice that the window opens. As he releases the group of pebbles he sees a flash of something in the window that reflects from the one dim streetlight.

Jaskier only realizes that the flash is blond hair, belonging to a human person, after his hand has released the rocks to their very carefully planned destination.

Jaskier feels himself moving in slow motion as if through a giant vat of spaghetti sauce, starting to cry out, “ _Noooooo_!” But it’s too late.

What happens in real time is this: Geralt z Rivii, who went to sleep early because practice starts at 5:30 a.m., went to sleep looking forward to the imminent probability that he had a room to himself for the entire year. No roommate, no problems. When he awakes from some _very_ rude birds pecking at his window, he does what any reasonable human would do and goes to feed them and shoo them away.

And when he opens the window to feed them grain from his hand, he gets smacked between the eye with a rock.

Below him, a man simultaneously covers his mouth and screams, “ _No!_ ” a good several seconds after the rock hits him.

Jaskier watches as what looks like a collection of grain falls from the absolute Adonis who opens the window. Adonis is a good six feet tall, with defined muscle that Jaskier can spot from this far below, and flowing locks that rustle in the cool breeze.

Adonis presses a hand to his forehead. “Who are you?” he bellows.

“I’m Jaskier!”

Jaskier waves.

Adonis blinks at him.

“ _Yass-key-yer_! Jaskier!”

Adonis starts cranking the window shut.

Jaskier realizes that he has communicated absolutely nothing that he meant to communicate. “Wait—I’m your roommate!”

Adonis pauses cranking the window shut.

Jaskier can almost feel it now—Adonis carrying him like a swooning bride up the four flights of stairs and laying him down in a bed next to him. A warm bed. With covers that get the temperature to at least eight-five degrees. He smiles in anticipation.

Adonis reaches forward, grabs the window, and slams it shut.

“Wait!” Jaskier shrieks.

Adonis has walked out of sight. Jaskier gets on his tip-toes and tries to see if Adonis is within earshot, but the golden flowing locks are nowhere to be found.

Great.

Jaskier sits down next to his suitcase and his violin case, which are the only possessions to his name in this godforsaken universe. And it seems he’s destined to die by their side, frozen by the cold, before he ever gets his first kiss or, hell, goes to a concert with a mosh pit and where the average attendee (and performer) age isn’t eighty-five.

The front door of the dorm creaks open and Jaskier looks up. Adonis stands there, encased in light, wearing nothing but soft booty shorts that cover less than they are supposed to, his titties OUT, his murderous face that is solely glaring at Jaskier IN.

Jaskier scrambles up as Adonis marches over. “Hi,” he rambles and sticks his hand out to shake, “I’m Jaskier, you may know me as the guy who got your attention earlier. If you are indeed the other resident of room 420, then we are roommates. What is your name? What…what are you doing?”

Adonis walks straight past him, ignoring his outstretched hand, and Jaskier starts to get a little offended. Adonis then bends down and picks up Jaskier’s suitcase and violin and turns on his heel to march back to the dorm.

Jaskier follows behind him. “Be careful with the violin! It’s an antique.”

Adonis doesn’t respond.

It’s silent until the elevator opens on the fourth floor. “Can I get your name at least so I know what to call you?” Jaskier tries again.

Adonis glares at him. “Why would you call me a name when you could just smash my window open to get my attention again?”

Jaskier can’t find the will to close his mouth at that, hanging it open in a silent protest. He knows, but hey. As Adonis leads him to the room and unlocks it, Jaskier manages to mutter, “ _Our_ window.”

Adonis throws Jaskier’s suitcase onto his bed a little too hard.

* * *

Jaskier wakes up to his phone blaring weakly and the sun stabbing daggers into his eyes. He sits up in one disjointed motion and stares out of the lone window in this prison cell of a dorm, and looks to where the sound could be coming from. His still-unnamed roommate’s bed is empty, and the sheets are folded nicely and the pillows (three of them, and one is a small square pillow for decoration) have been fluffed.

Jaskier stands up from his bed, which has no sheets on it and one pillow, and looks out the window. From here, the spot where he almost froze to death last night looks so calm and peaceful. There’s a small dent in the window where Jaskier’s rocks collided, and Jaskier is almost proud.

There’s a muffled sound coming from his phone still, and Jaskier digs behind the bed where it has fallen and pulls it out. 10:25 a.m. 2% battery. 7 missed calls.

Yennefer V (10:25): WHERE R U

Oh, shit.

Freshman orientation started half an hour ago.

Jaskier flies through any semblance of a routine to wake up, scraping deodorant onto his armpits and dumping extraneous clothes out of his backpack, hurriedly looking up the directions to the auditorium as his phone hangs on at 1%. He’s proud that it’s lasted this long.

Jaskier bursts into the auditorium eight minutes later, and he would high five himself if an entire five-hundred-person auditorium didn’t shift in their seats and glare at him. A thousand white eyes stare, soulless and unblinking, at him, and Jaskier tries to look over all of them and the professor at the front of the room, hands on her hips, to find a spare seat.

Yen is here somewhere, but every seat is taken, because everyone arrived on time. Jaskier’s a back-of-the-room kind of person, but he has to admit defeat and look down at the front couple of rows.

And he sees it—one seat on the far side of the room on the third row from the front, next to someone with long, slightly wavy hair in a loose French braid.

Jaskier immediately starts making his way across the auditorium. Students have left their backpacks in the aisles, and Jaskier accidentally knocks over water bottles, steps on chip bags, and kicks one laptop charger out of charging mode before he makes it to the aisle. By this time everyone is paying attention to the professor as she reads out what seems to be a list of names to the class, and as Jaskier starts to climb over people, some students chirp back.

Roll call.

Shit, there’s _roll call_ here?

The next person in front of him sighs loudly, gathers their stuff in their arms, and folds the chair desk back into their arm rest so that Jaskier can move his ungraceful legs past to the seat.

This empty seat has what can amount to a metaphorical halo around it, calling Jaskier to it, and in the next seat is a person who takes up all of their space with spacious muscle and crossed arms, and…and their hair is even shinier and blonder in person…and Jaskier comes to a halt as Adonis himself turns and glares at Jaskier.

“Great,” Adonis mutters, and turns back to the professor.

Jaskier sits down in the empty seat. “Sorry,” he responds, but he doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for.

“Anywhere you could have sat,” Adonis continues, “and it was _right_ here.”

Jaskier glances a look at the man in the daylight. Adonis’s eyes complete a more serious resting bitch face than any Jaskier has seen on gym bros he’s ogled before. He crosses his arms, muscles bulging right out of his tight, _tight_ shirt, and Jaskier admits that, even though Adonis has an absolutely intimidating bitch face, he is very much like a gym bro in that regard. Killer biceps.

“This was the only seat available,” Jaskier responds finally as he gets his laptop out and hopes there’s still charge in it. If the orientation leader is still calling names, he’s got time. He’s not completely fucked (but thanks for the confidence anyways, Yennefer).

“Not my problem,” Adonis says, and Jaskier makes eye contact with him this time. There’s a dull purple bruise blooming between his eyes, and hey, that’s Jaskier’s handiwork.

“Look,” Jaskier starts, and Adonis bristles immediately. “No, no, not—I’m sorry. I’m very sorry about the damage to your perfect face, okay? It absolutely was not my intention to give you that huge shiner. I’m normal, okay? I’ll be normal, and nice, and we’ll be great roommates.”

Triumphantly, Jaskier opens his laptop, and immediately, tinny moans blare forth from his speakers.

This can’t be happening.

Jaskier hits the mute button on his laptop, but the keyboard’s responsiveness hasn’t booted up when the _autoplay video_ did, and he furiously smashes the mute button, but breathy and both extremely male moans continue to blare on max volume.

_“Fuck, daddy, give it to me…”_

_“That’s it. Push yourself onto it. Yeahhhhhh.”_

Jaskier slams his laptop screen down, hearing it crack, and there’s still another second delay before the sound cuts out.

Everyone is staring at him again, and he doesn’t meet any of their eyes. His roommate is especially glaring at him, so close that the metaphorical heat really burns.

Jaskier tries to slide down in his seat.

Over the sounds of this absolutely horrible no good very bad day, the professor calls out, “Geralt z Rivii?”

The entire auditorium collectively holds its breath, and next to him, his roommate bites out, “Here.”

Jaskier closes his eyes, and with that, the orientation goes back to normal. The professor has reached the end of the alphabet, skipping Jaskier entirely, and starts introducing the campus map.

“So,” he says awkwardly, as every other person in the room dutifully types out the notes on their laptops, “Geralt’s your name, huh?”

Geralt doesn’t stop typing on his laptop, which, due to the horrifically designed auditorium seats, is balanced precariously on his rock solid thighs. Jaskier may or may not be currently looking at the thighs more than the man.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, “your pants are on inside out.”

Jaskier looks down and sees the tag hanging off the front of his sweatpants.

Worst day of his life.

* * *

“Yennefer,” Jaskier calls, parting the sea of students who have smartly chosen to walk at the back of the campus tour, “over here!”

Yennefer, Jaskier’s worst enemy from childhood and now the only person that hasn’t fully formed their opinion of him based on a few unfortunate incidents, walks near the front of the campus tour. She glares at him, and her purple contacts are in today. She’s decked out in pastel goth attire as well, going all out for her first impressions.

She motions for him to walk to her.

If Jaskier walks at the front, he’s going to have to actually listen, and he doesn’t want to do that. But the cool loners in the back look at him and make rude sex gestures behind his back, and he doesn’t like that either, so he jogs to catch up to the front of the line.

“Yen!” Jaskier says, out of breath after jogging a couple meters. “I made it.”

“Excuse me,” an English voice comes from the front of the crowd, and the tour guide glares disapprovingly at Jaskier. “I’m explaining how entering the grounds works. Is that not _important_ enough for you to consider, Pornography Boy?”

“No, ma’am,” Jaskier mumbles, and hides behind Yennefer.

Yennefer stares at the tour guide, her mouth slightly agape.

The tour guide finally releases Jaskier from her glare and goes back to discussing what time of night the gates close.

“Isn’t she so cool,” Yennefer hisses at Jaskier from the side of her mouth.

“Did you just see that? She publicly humiliated me. I don’t think she’s allowed to do that.”

“You publicly humiliated yourself. She just reminded you,” Yennefer tells him. Jaskier is now remembering why they are enemies.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m woefully unprepared for college and everyone hates me from the get go. Glad Ms. Tour Guide can join in the fun.”

“Tissaia,” Yennefer corrects. “Her name is Tissaia.”

Jaskier repeats, “Tissaia,” in a facsimile of Yennefer’s voice.

The tour guide snaps her attention back to him. “Yes?”

“Oh.” Jaskier is very quiet now. More attention on him. “Ummm.”

“Did you have a question?”

“Of course I did.” Jaskier can feel his cheeks burning and his hands start to shake. “Uh. What would you recommend we do in our free time here?”

Tissaia regards him. “Send faceless pics to guys on the Internet who don’t yet know you want to be called Daddy. So someone who _wasn’t_ in attendance this morning.”

Laughter ripples through the eight people who are close enough to the front to hear her, and Jaskier drops his head right back into his hands.

“She’s right,” Yennefer offers, and she and Tissaia make eye contact.

“Not you too. This is absolutely the worst first impression I’ve given anyone.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure you can dig yourself further into a hole, given enough opportunity. But yeah, you definitely need to find someone in college whose first memory of you isn’t…all of that.”

Yennefer has not looked at him once, still staring deep into Tissaia’s eyes.

“Yennefer, I have social anxiety. I cannot do that.”

“Then, I don’t know, leverage the people you already know? How’s your roommate?”

“Worse than this!”

Yennefer breaks eye contact to look impressed by Jaskier for the first time in either of their lives. “I wish that surprised me.”

“Then what do I do? I can’t live as the guy who accidentally played gay porn in front of everyone!”

“I don’t know. Meet people on the internet? But stop talking to me, I’m deciding if I want to approach her.”

“Tissaia? You’re going to…woo…a senior?”

Yennefer elbows him with such precision that Jaskier’s opposite side hurts. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going to laugh at her tour guide jokes. I’m going to ask if she wants to get coffee after this. And maybe, in a month or so, when we’ve gone on several outings that could be considered dates if we were cishet, I will admit my feelings to her and go down on her with…” Yennefer clenches her fist. “…such a passion.”

Jaskier stares. “Wow. You really have this college romance thing all figured out.”

“Of course. Who do you think I am?”

Jaskier doesn’t even have his college roommate thing sorted out; he can’t even _begin_ to think about college romance.

* * *

Jaskier lasts until 9 p.m. before he makes an online dating profile.

But, okay, hear him out. He can’t stand it any more. Tissaia’s comments about Jaskier Internet dating weren’t…inaccurate, as statements go. And once the idea was planted in his head, well. What else is he going to do? Meet people in real life? Social anxiety cuts that right out. Hang out with Yen? Gross, they met for the first time when Yen punched Jaskier with a wet fish in seventh grade; they’re not friends. Talk to Geralt?

Jaskier looks up from his fetal position on his bed. Geralt is sitting with perfect posture at his desk, typing methodically onto his laptop. Next to him is a stack of textbooks that this man has already purchased that obscure Jaskier from seeing the contents of the screen, but he is clearly studying. Class doesn’t start for a week and he’s studying.

The bruise on Geralt’s face shines brighter than his hair, so Jaskier obviously can’t interact with him while there’s a glaring reminder of Jaskier’s failure staring back at him. And Geralt’s French braid is now in the last state of winding out of a French braid, the three curls resting on his shoulders, wrapping around his face almost like a crown. Jaskier has a pang of want in his gut, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

So he scrolls through his profile, and _fuck_ , Tissaia read him like an open book. He has no good pictures with his face included. He has one artsy photo that he included in his senior yearbook, a full-body shot of him whipping out of a body of water, reflected in the moonlight. His face is completely in shadow.

Jaskier uploads that one and the one photo of the cool cosplay of him as Dipper Pines that his mother took from the back, slightly blurry, with Jaskier unsuccessfully flexing his biceps.

He adds in that mirror ab selfie he took that revealed whipped cream sprayed on his chest in an almost-perfect grid, maraschino cherries nestled in every grid cube. Presto. Perfect profile. He clicks upload and is immediately faced with a stack of people in his area.

Next to him, Geralt shifts, and Jaskier can’t imagine being so _hot_ and so _smart_ and so _angry at Jaskier_ that he misses what a cool person Jaskier is online, and Jaskier has the cherries arranged in a grid on his chest to prove his coolness.

But now Jaskier is thinking of his roommate again, a hard lump in his throat that might be regret and might be anger and is definitely lust. Maybe that’s why he clicks on a similarly faceless profile because the dude has included an ab reveal photo that reveals muscles similarly bulging to what Jaskier imagines Geralt to have, and in this picture, a cute pug sticks its head sideways into the selfie, staring at itself in the mirror. This dude is cute _and_ thick _and_ online _and_ within a mile from Jaskier’s current location, which means this perfect person is a fellow student.

Jass_Queen (9:31): hey!

Immediately after he sends it, Jaskier buries his head in his arm and musty pillow and screams. Idiot. He’s an idiot. The guy is so thick and so hot, there’s no way he’d interact with Jaskier and his shitty profile.

Jaskier’s phone buzzes. He lifts his head up and looks at the new notification.

TheWisher (9:32): Hey! What’s up?

Okay. Okay.

Jaskier gets his breathing and stuttering heart under control. He wrote back. _He wrote back!_

Jaskier looks back at Geralt, who has paused typing whatever essay he’s writing weeks early and is staring intently at his computer screen.

Jass_Queen (9:32): eh, not having a great time with my roommate

Jaskier buries his head in his pillow again. Maybe he came off too strong. He really doesn’t want to communicate that he hates his roommate right off the bat. It’s been one day living with him, and he doesn’t want this Wisher guy to think Jaskier’s moody and judgmental and hates people.

 _Ping!_ Another notification.

TheWisher (9:33): Oh, I understand that. A lot. I’m also feeling this right now.

Jass_Queen (9:33): great i was so worried that it was weird. never had a roommate before

TheWisher (9:34): They’re usually great! Just not this one.

TheWisher (9:35): I understand that I probably shouldn’t pass judgement this early, but I’ve definitely burnt that bridge.

Jass_Queen (9:35): omg me too! i’m just very afraid that he doesn’t understand who i am and why i do the things that i do and that i won’t get a chance to explain myself before his mind’s made up

Jass_Queen (9:36): …

Jass_Queen (9:36): sorry if that’s a lot but you’re a stranger on the internet and you’re nearby so it’s like. i’m free to talk about my deep feelings but there’s also shared experience yknow

TheWisher (9:36): No worries! I understand perfectly. My problems are a little different, but I just really wanted this year to be something great.

TheWisher (9:37): I think reality is hitting, and it’s hitting hard. It hit really hard at the beginning ;)

TheWisher (9:37): Sorry, that wasn’t a joke you were supposed to understand.

Jass_Queen (9:38): were you making a hard on joke??

Jass_Queen (9:38): excUse mE faceless man but you’re moving too fast!

Jass_Queen (9:39): ^^ this is a joke of course.

Jass_Queen (9:40): but i didn’t get on here to have a random hook up. jsyk. love the conversation tho really enjoying this

TheWisher (9:40): I’m cool with talking to you and seeing where this goes!

TheWisher (9:41): Anonymously, of course.

Jass_Queen (9:41): ofc would not have it any other way!

Jaskier lets out a huge yawn despite the adrenaline stemming from intermittently typing on his phone. He remembers that he only slept six hours last night, even with waking up late, and he’s a tender soul and fades fast.

Jass_Queen (9:42): ok actually don’t take this the wrong way but with all that said about conversation, i’m actually super tired and i think i’m going to crash

TheWisher (9:42): It’s a Monday, I get it. I’m going to tuck in soon as well. Sweet dreams!

Jass_Queen (9:42): and also good luck with your slumber to you xx

Jaskier hits send and curls into his comforter, feeling more content and hopeful than he has all day. This could be the start of something.

He lies on his side, staring at Geralt. The man’s fingers rest lightly on his keyboard, and he is engrossed in his laptop. On the desk, Geralt’s phone _ping!_ s and lights up and Geralt ignores it entirely in favor of staring at his laptop. Is he smiling at his screen?

Jaskier turns to the other side. What kind of person smiles at their homework?

Behind him, Geralt finally moves from his desk and Jaskier can hear him at the closet, stripping his clothes.

Jaskier can imagine Geralt’s faint smile as he stared, and sure, maybe Jaskier would like it if that smile was directed at him. Or even if just a neutral expression was directed at Jaskier. Anything but the grimace of which Jaskier gets the full brunt would be acceptable.

Jaskier closes his eyes. Enough worrying about Geralt. He has the Wisher on his side now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That's why Jaskier shoves the joint down his pants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter said jaskier and yennefer are FRIENDS damnit

His first midterm is tomorrow morning and Jaskier is absolutely freaking out.

Yen stares him straight in they eyes and says, “Repeat after me: I am a badass.”

“Yennefer, you’re a badass.”

Yen lets go of Jaskier’s hand—which, _rude_. “This isn’t going to work if you don’t act like a real adult and repeat the damn phrase after me.”

“How is saying it aloud going to help me?”

Jaskier starts to smile despite himself, but his hands are clammy and shaking and now they’re getting cold because Yen isn’t holding them. “I think you need me to repeat words because you’re going to mash them together using cybertronics and, and fucking—steal my bank account or something. Rob me blind.”

“You’re a goddamn idiot, you know that?”

“Oh, that one I can repeat after you. I’m a goddamn idiot.”

Yen holds his hands again. The smile on Jaskier’s face stays there, despite everything. Holding someone’s hands—holding Yen’s hands, holding his childhood enemy’s hands—is nice. God. It’s like Jaskier has a friend in college of all places.

“Jas, it’s one in the morning. Just repeat my mantra so I can steal wine at Tissaia’s apartment and read Poe or Hawthorne or whatever her profs are assigning for Halloween-themed reading.”

Jaskier squeezes her hand back. There’s a pang of something in his chest now. “Do you have something else to get to?”

Yen grips his hands harder, though the shaking in his hands don’t stop. “Jaskier, I want to be here, and I want to make sure that your midterms go well.”

He leans against her shoulder. Their legs swing off of Jaskier’s twin bed, which is raised so tall that neither of them touch the ground. Just swinging, holding hands, breathing. And Jaskier likes it, and he likes Yen’s friendship so much, and she’s taking off time she could be using to woo Tissaia to be here with him, despite everything—but it’s not helping the anxiety welling up.

God, he’s such a disappointment.

“I’ll repeat after you,” he says.

“I, Jaskier Dandilion, am a badass.”

“I, Jaskier Dandilion, am a badass.”

“See? That wasn’t so bad.”

Jaskier pitches his voice up an octave. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

“Quit it. I, Jaskier Dandilion, am a strong and capable musician.”

“I, Jaskier Dandilion, am a strong and capable musician.”

“And I’m going to absolutely ace this presentation.”

“And I am going to absolutely ace this presentation.”

Yen hugs him. Jaskier hugs back like he’s finding something he’s been missing, some slot within him that has been left empty until he found himself here.

But his hands still shake.

And, as a violinist, that’s worse than stage fright.

Jaskier leans back against the cold prison-cell-esque brick of the dorm room, locking his and Yennefer’s hands between his knees. He looks past Yen, on whom he leans, and across the room.

He looks to the side of the room that is sparsely decorated with a row of succulents on the desk, a string of fairy lights over the bed, and matching pillowcases and covers that change weekly with Geralt’s punctual wash.

Geralt sits cross-legged on his shitty dorm chair, staring at his laptop, lost in thought. The pile of books that obscure Jaskier’s view of this man has grown, even though it’s only been three weeks since the semester started. He chews on his lip every so often, looking slightly agitated. His AirPods are in, and he’s focused on alternatively scratching notes down in his pristine bullet journal and tapping his foot to an incredibly steady five-four beat.

Jaskier should know the preciseness of the beat. After all, he’s had a similar one stuck in his head since he started memorizing his piece a week ago. And what a piece it is—a modern interpretation of the classics, so it’s extra showy in bits and discordant when it doesn’t need to be. But steady, somehow, through it all.

Geralt wouldn’t know anything about Jaskier’s piece, though, because he’s never asked. He just _sits_ at his _desk_ and works in the few hours of the day when he and Jaskier are awake at the same time. Jaskier has never set an actual schedule with this man, but they’ve fallen into a rhythm where Jaskier stays up until four a.m. and Geralt goes to sleep at midnight, and when Geralt wakes up at seven or _whenever_ , Jaskier hasn’t sobered up yet from the night before.

Kidding!

The ragers still elude Jaskier, so he’s kidding. Yennefer could probably hook him up with some of Tissaia’s wine—perks of getting to know a twenty-two-year-old—but that would mean Jaskier would have to drink with Yennefer, which, he’s not really ready to be that vulnerable.

Jaskier doesn’t quite have that kind of relationship with anyone.

Except…

He disentangles his hands from Yen’s and fishes his phone out from his pocket. He’s been spiraling into an anxiety attack since, what, eleven o’clock? Only a couple missed text messages from the Wisher.

TheWisher (11:10): I looked up a music meme!

TheWisher (11:11): https://www.bingeclock.com/memes/its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia___clapping_off_tempo_at_a_concert.jpg

TheWisher (11:30): Did you go to bed already?

TheWisher (11:47): I should probably go to sleep as well. Midterms tomorrow! But I didn’t quite finish copying my notes, so I’ll be up for a while longer.

Jass_Queen (1:07): never been to a concert that wasn’t a classical music concert but it’s still funny

Jass_Queen (1:07): not asleep yet. gl with midterms!! just running music i gotta perform over and over in my mind

If he tells the Wisher that it’s fine, maybe it will be. Maybe Jaskier can psych himself out of this. Stranger things have happened.

Speech bubbles appear immediately.

Aww, was the Wisher waiting for him to respond, even thinking that he was asleep?

TheWisher (1:08): I wish—haha!—I could help with the thought process. I hear that being rested is the best condition to perform under.

Jass_Queen (1:09): rested is the best condition to do most things under

Jass_Queen (1:09): maybe not sleep, but

Jass_Queen (1:09): everything else

Yennefer looks over Jaskier’s shoulder and he almost throws his phone against his closet hiding the chat so quickly.

She just smiles. “What are you doing? If you’re looking at porn, don’t worry about it, we’ve all already heard it.”

“It’s been almost a month, Yen. You don’t have to keep bringing it up!”

From Geralt’s position at his desk, he mutters, “We have to keep it in the public consciousness somehow.”

Yen points at him in an identification that only the sleep-drunk do. “You. I get you. But Jaskier, what’s up?”

Lies come naturally to Jaskier, but his heart is beating in his chest so loudly and there’s something about this relationship with the Wisher that he wants to keep just for himself, without anyone else knowing, and he can’t articulate it but it means so much to him that no one critiques him, or anything, and so he blurts, “My mom.”

Geralt frowns and utters, “Hmm,” from somewhere that seems to be in the back of his throat.

Yennefer throws her head back and yells, “Gross!” at the same time. “You talk to your mom? In this economy?”

“Y’all’s family life is fucked up if that’s your response,” Jaskier tells both of them, pocketing his phone. Crisis averted.

Geralt does not respond as Yennefer laughs without any humor to it. “Yeah, you could say that.”

It’s a little too real, and the room turns silent. Geralt even stops tapping his feet five-four. Jaskier stares at that crack in the dorm window, and the silence makes the panic worse. Not only is he still shaking, but his limbs are itching, now. He doesn’t have the thought process available to scratch them.

“Okay,” Yennefer says, “I need to use the restroom. Where is it…?”

“Second door to your right at the end of the hall,” Geralt responds immediately.

Yen and Jaskier both look at him. By the end of his sentence, Jaskier had just about finished opening his mouth.

“Okay,” Yen says slowly and disentangles herself from Jaskier. “See ya in a bit.”

Why did Geralt respond so quickly? The dorm room door closes and Jaskier has a terrible, awful thought: Geralt is into Yennefer.

Again: ew, gross. _Geralt_? Into Yen?

Jaskier shoves both hand sin his pockets, and they don’t quake too much. “So,” he tests the waters, “Yennefer, huh?”

Geralt is reaching into a desk drawer and pauses. He looks back at Jaskier. “What about her?”

“She’s great.” Jaskier raises his eyebrows in anticipation.

Geralt chews on his next few words, as if he’s forcing them out. “She’s definitely being a very supportive…friend. You know, if you ever need me to be out of the room, just…just ask.”

“Um, okay, I guess I’ll keep that in mind.” What is Geralt getting at? Jaskier’s going to shoo him out of the room?

Geralt interrupts his thought process and leans closer to Jaskier, elbows on his knees, a grin creeping up his face. This is the first time Jaskier has seen Geralt really smile, and— _wow_ , it’s blistering. He’s hot. He’s really, really hot. “Do you think she’s far enough away now?” Geralt asks.

“Wh…what?”

Geralt is immediately on his feet, and in his hands are a plastic bag and rubber band. Jaskier watches, not moving from his splayed-out position on the bed, as Geralt stands on his tip toes and goes to the fire alarm, covering it with the bag and snapping the rubber band around it.

“What are you doing?”

Geralt walks back to his desk, and when he turns around, there’s a joint in his hand.

Jaskier sits up. “Where did you get that.”

Geralt leans over the windowsill. His shirt is too short as he leans over, exposing his flat, defined back, and he cranks open the window. Jaskier’s mouth is already dry. Geralt’s love handles are _right there_.

Jaskier is starting to get excited, which means his shaking is coming back with a vengeance. “Geralt, are you secretly a cool person?”And is Geralt secretly being cool _to Jaskier_? Is hell freezing over?

Geralt does the literal unthinkable and crawls onto Jaskier’s bed next to him, lying against the prison cell brick behind them. He offers Jaskier the joint.

As he takes out his lighter ( _this man has a lighter!_ ), he says, “There aren’t practices during midterms, so I don’t have to be awake until nine tomorrow.”

Jaskier takes the first drag, watching the flame light up Geralt’s features, softening them, and his hair—blow-dried into little ringlets today—looks so cozy and comforting resting on his shoulder like that.

Geralt looks into his eyes. _Geralt is looking into his eyes._ He says, “I wanted to help…someone with finals. You also look like you can use some help.”

Jaskier coughs, smoke going up his nostrils. “Oh, am I second choice, am I?”

“Of course not. Give me that back.”

Jaskier hands the blunt back to Geralt and the man inhales deeply. It’s extremely impressive.

“And here I was, thinking you were a goody two-shoes jock.”

Geralt huffs a laugh. “And here I was, thinking you were a nerdy music major.”

“I’ll have you know that music majors are the wildest people you’ll meet. Absolutely insane group, the entire lot of us. You scientists are the real nerds.”

“And yet who provided the joint?” Geralt counters, and this is so fucking funny to Jaskier for some reason. He leans back agains the cold brick and laughs.

Five minutes later, Jaskier is wheezing, out of breath, and they have fallen over onto Jaskier’s bed. Geralt is lying on the mattress, his face in Jaskier’s pillow. If Jaskier wasn’t high right now, he would be freaking out, but as it is, even his hands have calmed

Geralt’s shirt has ridden up on him again, and Jaskier is lying on Geralt’s side, his face looking directly at Geralt’s abs. And again, if Jaskier wasn’t high right now, he would be freaking out.

Jaskier stills. Hear him out—Geralt is very attractive, as anyone who has ever met him can probably attest to, but Jaskier thinks he might actually be starting to like him. Sure, he’s not going to idealize this man or anything, he doesn’t interact with Jaskier with any regularity despite being his roommate and he definitely doesn’t comfort him, _and_ he basically admitted he was comforting Jaskier because he couldn’t comfort some other nebulous person, but he’s here now.

Kind of like Yen was here. And, Jaskier also realizes, if Yen hadn’t slapped him with a fish in seventh grade, he would probably also be into her instead of admiring and fearing her from afar. Geralt and Yen are very, very different people, but Jaskier pauses for several extended seconds as he tries to figure out why they are basically the same person in his mind.

Geralt is tapping him on the shoulder repeatedly. “Stop being so high,” he wheezes, and for some reason, his voice sounds as breathy as usual but cracking as well. A mini puberty. “Talk to me.”

“Oh, are you bored of me?” Jaskier doesn’t say, _“Already?”_ but oh _boy_ once he thinks it, there’s the ache in his chest again.

Geralt sits up and presses his forehead against Jaskier. “Bored? Of you?” As soon as Jaskier’s breath support is halved with that one gesture, and Jaskier is getting ready to faint or kiss him, Geralt leans back again, thunking his head against the brick. That’s going to hurt tomorrow. “Jaskier, you’ve waxed eloquently about absolutely insane music majors. Y’all don’t bore me. Music majors…fascinate me.”

“What other music majors do you know?” Jaskier says. Geralt does not seem like the type to hang out with a crowd that went to band camp every summer for the last six years.

Geralt doesn’t respond.

Jaskier raises his hands. “Oh, okay, keep your secrets. See if I care. How dare you have secret music major friends without me knowing.”

Geralt almost looks offended. “If you’re going to say that, give me the joint back.” He reaches out for it and Jaskier leans back on the bed, holding it between his outstretched fingers.

“No, its mine. No—Geralt, stop, that tickles.”

Geralt pokes him in the side again. “That’s my property! You’re holding my property!”

“Yeah? Well, now I’m taking a hit of your property. I’m Marxist, baby, you can’t use private property against me!”

“That’s personal property _and you know it_!” Geralt reaches and grabs the joint right out of Jaskier’s mouth and sticks it in his own.

Jaskier shuts his mouth. He watches Geralt’s lips close around the joint, and something in him viciously wants to have covered it in lipstick, so that when Geralt took another hit, he could see the bold red reflected on Geralt’s lips, and see where Geralt’s lips had touched the same spot Jaskier did.

Yep. Definitely a little bit into his roommate.

Well shit, now Jaskier’s caught between two men, and not in the sexy way.

“What?” Geralt says, joint dangling from his lips. “No budding retort? No ‘Begone, libertarian?’”

“ _This_ is why you didn’t want Yennefer in here while you’re smoking—exCUSE ME, did you just say you were a libertarian?”

Geralt takes another drag. “That was a joke. And, um, why are you concerned about Yennefer?”

Jaskier waves a triumphant finger in his face. “Because you care about her opinion of you!”

It makes so much sense, and Jaskier has solved his own problem. Into two men? Well, if one of them is into Yennefer, then he doesn’t have to worry about it. Over and done with. Admire Geralt from afar and keep onto what he has with the Wisher.

Geralt scoffs. “I don’t think I care about her opinion as much as you do.”

What was that supposed to mean? If Jaskier wasn’t so high, maybe his singular brain cell would work, “Give me back the joint.”

Geralt obliges.

Jaskier speaks between puffs. “I don’t think Yen would look down on you—any more than she already does. _Eyyyyyy._ ” He would high five himself if he could muster the coordination.

Geralt looks a little hurt by that. “Why does she look down on me?”

From the doorway, Yennefer drawls, “Maybe it’s because I hear you talk once a week, maximum.”

Jaskier and Geralt lock gazes, and Jaskier knows he just said that Yennefer wouldn’t care about weed, but that was _Geralt_ she wouldn’t care about. Jaskier needs to maintain a good reputation so he can keep his one surviving friend.

That’s why Jaskier shoves the joint down his pants.

The dorm room hangs in suspense for a moment, and Geralt looks down and back up at Jaskier, mouthing, _“Did you really just do that?”_

“Roll with it,” Jaskier mutters as Yennefer stands in front of Jaskier’s bed.

Yen puts her hands on her hips. “Roomie? You’re taking my spot.”

Geralt waltzes back over to his side of the room. He’s still looking at them, alternating between staring at Jaskier’s crotch, where the joint may or may not be burning something, and Yen. A wave of angry heat descends over Jaskier as Geralt looks at Yennefer. Okay, so Geralt _like_ likes her, and the confirmation of this is overwhelming and hits somewhere Jaskier doesn’t want to examine too much.

Yes, he did literally just think that Geralt being into Yen solved Jaskier’s unrequited crush problem.

Yennefer sits down like a goddamn queen next to Jaskier, overlapping one of her legs with his.

Jaskier wants to—to get back at Geralt for eyeing Yen, or something, so he crows at her,“Yes, babe, assert your dominance!”

Something in Geralt’s expression flickers, and in one of the worst and most base part of Jaskier, he thinks, _Good_.

Yen rolls her eyes and huffs under her breath, “ _That_ was an uncomfortable sentence to hear—hey, look, your hands.”

“What?” Jaskier looks down at them, wiggling them a bit to see if they still work. “What is it?”

Yennefer holds one of his hands. “Can’t you feel? They’ve stopped shaking.”

“They have,” Jaskier slowly realizes. He smiles. “The weed—um, you helped!”

Yennefer leans in and adjusts Jaskier’s hoodie. “Jas,” she says sweetly, “you know I can smell the weed, right?”

Jaskier almost chokes.

“Next time, be a dear and crack the window a little bit wider, yeah? I’m getting a headache.”

Jaskier nods. “Of course. Sorry. Was your bathroom break good, at least?” It lasted for quite a while, so he hopes so.

Yen grins. “Yeah. We talked and I’m joining Tissaia for trivia night at the club Thursday.”

“Nice!”

Jaskier and Yen rest together for a second.

“It smells really bad in here,” Yen repeats. “I gotta go to my room. There’s an air purifier there.”

Jaskier can hear Geralt mutter, his hands poised over the keyboard, “Why don’t you two get a room instead?”

Jaskier does not know what is going on. He turns to Yennefer, and she stares at Geralt like she has equally no idea what is going on.

“Okay,” Yen says slowly, “I’m going to go now.”

Geralt finishes typing on his laptop as Yen leaves, and he starts packing up to go to sleep.

Jaskier takes the joint out of his underwear, places it in his desk drawer, wraps himself up in his duvet and pulls out his phone.

TheWisher (3:35): You’re going to do great on your midterms! Maybe someday I can wish you that in person. XO

Jaskier types back as fast as his high-ass fingers will let him.

Jass_Queen (3:37): yEss ye s yes i would lvoe that too

Jass_Queen (3;38): LOVE**

Jass_Queen (3:38): wow maybe i shouldn’t have emphasized love that much buy me dinner first ;)

Jass_Queen (3:38): asldhasdfhsdflsf

Jass_Queen (3:39): that also came out wrong.

Jass_Queen (3:40): NOT WRONG! I WOULD LIKE TO DO THA TSOMEDAY !!

Jass_Queen (3:41): it’s just. i took something for my anxiety so sorry for all of this

Jass_Queen (3:41): guess you went to sleep i’ll see you/talk to u tomorrow

Satisfied, Jaskier plugs his phone back in and gets ready to pass out. His pillow smells like Geralt, and Jaskier can’t even name what Geralt smells like. Some kind of herb.

Jaskier looks across to Geralt, and the man is passed out face-first into his pillows, snoring every breath he takes.

As Jaskier fades to sleep, he thinks that even if Geralt is not interested in him, Jaskier would be honored to be his friend.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tissaia says flatly, “It’s not a threesome.” At the same time, Jaskier shakes his head vigorously and says, “It’s not a threesome.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note the rating change

Jaskier’s never taken nudes before.

It turns out this shit is _difficult_.

He stares down his reflection in the communal dorm bathroom, looking at the faint toothpaste stains, holding his phone in a white-knuckled grip so it doesn’t slip and fall on the tile. It’s nine a.m., anyone awake right now has already left for class. Even so, his heart still jumps into his throat every time he hears footsteps outside.

If he could use the mirror in his room for these selfies then it would be so much easier, but it’s the one day a week Geralt doesn’t have practice at the ass-crack of dawn, so his roommate is awake but still lying cocooned in a duvet on his bed.

As much as trying to photograph sexy nudes is difficult in this shared bathroom, it would be torture to, like, ask Geralt to leave the room so Jaskier could do it there. The other option is for Jaskier to strip down in front of Geralt, and he definitely can’t do that.

Jass_Queen (9:03): ok so i’ve never done this before but i’m going to try! for you! so just if they turn out blurry or w/e don’t blame me ok

He takes a deep breath and his shirt off, pushing his jeans and underwear down to his ankles. In the five minutes he had this morning after the Wisher texted him “Not to be too forward, but would you like to exchange nudes?” and before the anxiety overwhelmed him, Jaskier did some precursory googling to figure out what kind of nudes, in the mirror or otherwise, were easy to take, and he’s learned two things: 1) don’t show his face, and 2) maybe try to take some that aren’t just blurry dick pics first, so, y’know, he’ll awkwardly cup it or something.

TheWisher (9:04): I didn’t know I’m your first nudes! Don’t worry about the quality - anything you send me is always fucking fantastic.

Jaskier’s brain shuts of a little bit at that.

Okay. _Okay._ He can definitely do this. He holds his phone up to cover his face and angles his body so the Wisher can see the soft slope of his stomach, gripping his cock in his hand so that it disappears under the counter.

Jaskier holds his breath as he presses send.

Speech bubbles appear immediately, and Jaskier wants to melt into the tile floor a little bit.

Every single negative thought he’s had about his body rushes into the forefront of his consciousness as the speech bubbles keep moving. This is it. This is the moment the Wisher breaks up with him.

TheWisher (9:06): Would you mind giving me a closer look?

TheWisher (9:06): And further down?

TheWisher (9:06): ;)

Jaskier murmurs, “Shit,” despite himself, and gnaws on a couple of his knuckles.

The Wisher liked the nudes.

The Wisher really, really liked the nudes.

Jaskier turns the camera around so that it’s faced squarely at himself and leans his thighs against the counter. He holds the phone up high so that it catches his entire torso and his half chub, and moves his face out of the way so that only part of his neck is in frame. In the mirror behind him, Jaskier’s entire freckled ass is exposed as well.

In a moment of absolute recklessness that wells up from somewhere deep inside, Jaskier takes his free hand and rubs his nipple, reddening it and holding it as he takes the photo.

The shit eduroam wifi takes for-fucking-ever to send his picture, and Jaskier’s heart is clawing halfway out of his throat when the speech bubbles pop up again. What if the Wisher decides he’s actually hotter from further away, or hates the terrible bathroom lighting, or—

TheWisher (9:09): oh my gOD

TheWisher (9:09): This is what you do to me:

_TheWisher attached a video._

Jaskier’s entire higher functions break at once. The Wisher has broken grammar conventions, and he sent back a _video_? Oh my _god_ oh my god.

He clicks on it.

The Wisher is lounging in bed, completely nude. The video is taken from as high as his arm can stretch, looking down on his torso and thighs, which are, not to understate anything, _absolutely shredded_. In his free hand he holds his dick, and the video is a three second clip of him slowly moving his hand up and down. Jaskier’s got his volume on high, so he can hear an almost silent gasp as the Wisher’s fingers brush over his tip.

Well fuck. Now Jaskier is too hard for the communal bathroom.

Jass_Queen (9:10): ok ok OK O K O K OK. KOO

Jass_Queen (9:10): SORRY IM SPAMMING I JSUT

Jass_Queen (9:10): i’ve literally never been this turned on in my life i need to get back to my room to continue the fun

TheWisher (9:11): I await the continuation as eagerly as possible.

Fuck, that means the Wisher is stroking for him. For Jaskier. And he’s waiting for Jaskier to send him more.

Jaskier throws his shirt back on, belts his jeans, and looks at himself once more in the mirror to make sure he doesn’t look too wrecked. He exits the bathroom, walking as quickly to room 420 as possible. As he tries to fit his key in the door, his hands shake, and he drops it.

Shit. Come on.

Jaskier gets the key in his lock and twists the door open.

As he throws the door open, he thinks belatedly, _I really hope Geralt’s gone to class by now._

Jaskier is greeted with a loud shriek and sees Geralt’s duvet flying over his body to cover him. Jaskier stops in the doorway and stares for a couple seconds as he processes the scene in front of him. His blood isn’t exactly in his brain right now.

Oh.

 _Oh_.

“Geralt,” Jaskier starts to laugh, “did you wait for me to leave so you could _jack off_?”

From under the thick covers, Jaskier hears Geralt’s voice reply, muffled, “…No.”

Jaskier is still staring at the covers, and realizes he can see a definitive tent where Geralt’s dick is, and holy shit, Geralt isn’t even trying to hide it. Holy shit. He’s not even flagging a little bit.

From the second-hand embarrassment, Jaskier’s libido has decided to go and hide, but Geralt is still going steady. That’s impressive.

Jaskier starts to laugh. “I definitely don’t believe you.”

Geralt shoves enough of the duvet down so that he can lift his head and stare at Jaskier. _Damn_ , his cheeks are red and his hair is tousled, scrunched around his shoulders instead of pleated as usual. His mouth, too, is unusually red, and when he opens it to speak, Jaskier bites down on his own lip to keep any sound from emerging.

Geralt says, “You don’t have to believe me, it’s the tru—”

His gaze locks onto the tent that his dick still erects in the sheets.

Jaskier continues to laugh, his shoulders shaking. “For that hard of a boner, you’d have to be thinking about someone _hot_ ,” he teases.

Geralt moves under the sheets, and the tent collapses. “Maybe so,” his muffled voice says,

Oh, that’s right. Geralt’s into Yen. Which means he’s been jacking off thinking of Jaskier’s friend.

“You would be,” Jaskier mutters.

Yes, he understands the hypocrisy. He came here to jack off as well, but he wasn’t the one walked in on while doing it.

Geralt looks at him with a brow raised. It’s like Geralt is confused as to who Jaskier is talking about, but that’s preposterous. They both know Geralt’s into Yen.

Jaskier does not understand organic chemistry and going to college is the absolute _worst_. He paces up and down the length of his dorm room, his bunny slippers slapping on the flooring, clutching a calculator in one hand and his phone in the other. Every time he reaches his desk, he looks back down at his worksheet, and under the first problem he has hesitantly scratched numbers.

He reaches out and places the tip of his pencil on the paper, hesitating. He looks back down at his calculator. Nope, he doesn’t actually know what the next step is.

Jaskier turns on his feet and starts walking to the other end of the dorm room.

From his desk, Geralt shifts his entire body to glare at Jaskier. “Can you make a little less noise? I also have work due tomorrow.”

“I’m already wearing my comfiest slippers, what else do you want me to do?”

They stare at each other. Jaskier gesticulates with his calculator.

Geralt pauses. “Sorry. Didn’t mean that as an attack.” He turns back to his desk and flips over another page in his textbook.

Jaskier lowers his calculator. “I’m also sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb you.” He sits back down at his desk. Ignoring the problem in front of him, he opens his phone and types a message to the one person not annoyed at him right now.

Jass_Queen (6:35): wish you were here i could use some help on my chem homework

He waits, but the Wisher doesn’t respond. Wow, he must be really busy to not check his conversation. Jaskier takes a minute to scroll up and look at the nudes saved from earlier. He really misses when things were simpler this morning.

Jaskier looks at his homework and gazes at the next problem. He draws a benzene ring before reading the problem, because fuck, that’s probably partial credit already, right?

TheWisher (6:39): Oh no! Wish I could be there as well.

TheWisher (6:40): Don’t you think there’s another event that we might want to meet at first? ;)

Jaskier stares at his phone screen.

Um.

Jaskier looks back down at the screen.

The Wisher wants to meet him.

Holy shit, the Wisher wants to meet him!

What event does he want to meet him at?

Jaskier looks at his desk calendar featuring pictures of cats and idly looks down the list, seeing if there is anything Jaskier planned on going to. However, like always, his calendar is empty.

He turns to Geralt, who has opened his laptop and has placed it on top of his open textbook. From this angle, Jaskier can see that he has his calendar open, and he’s staring at it with a faint smile.

“Geralt?” Jaskier asks.

“Hmm?” Geralt grunts, not turning away from his screen. “Again, I’m sorry, you can pace if you want.”

Right. Jaskier had almost forgotten about that. “It’s not that. Is there anything, um, happening soon?”

Geralt shrugs. “I don’t know, are you going to the Homecoming dance?”

“Oh,” Jaskier says, and his voice is fainter than he thinks it should be. “Is that soon?”

Geralt glares at him again.

Jaskier raises his hands in the air in surrender. “Okay, okay, I get it, I should read my emails more often. Eat my ass, fam.”

He doesn’t hear a snarky reply, and when he looks back over, Geralt has stopped moving, just staring somewhere between his screen and his textbook, eyes large and similarly unmoving.

“Get over yourself.” Jaskier rolls his eyes. “You’re such a prude.”

“Just because I didn’t want you to walk in on me masturbating doesn’t mean I’m a prude, Jaskier.”

Jaskier holds his heart in mock offense. “Just come right out and say you don’t want me to see your dick, and save us all the trouble.”

Geralt opens his mouth to say something, and then shakes his head and goes back to his work.

Rude.

Jaskier returns to his chemistry homework, but now he knows that the Homecoming dance—and football game, he guesses, but who gives a flying fuck about that—is soon and the Wisher may or may not have hinted that he wants Jaskier to invite him to it.

Jaskier has never had this much personal responsibility in his young adult life.

He starts gnawing on the end of his calculator, and when he notices, he doesn’t bother trying to stop.

How should Jaskier officially ask the Wisher to Homecoming?

Send him a text. Right. This shouldn’t be too hard.

Jaskier opens the app and taps on the chat to bring up the keyboard. Inviting the Wisher should be easy. Okay. Just write the invitation.

Come on, Jaskier. Just write the invitation.

Just _write_ the _goddamn_ invitation.

_Just write the invitation!_

Before he consciously knows it, Jaskier is dialing Yennefer.

He takes a deep breath in and then a deep breath out. Yennefer will know what to do.

The call connects and Jaskier doesn’t wait before blurting out, “Yen, I need your help. I have a problem.”

He stops because Yennefer is continuing to talk in a muffled manner on the phone. “…Yes, I have seen the astrology memes on Twitter. … It is kind of funny at first, but then I see that, like, five people are making bank with YouTube videos exposing the signs of their exes, or saying what they like about each sign, or, I don’t know, trying to market this way of thinking to young people. Funny shit, like comparing the signs to classic Vines, don’t matter when people are saying, like, ‘Here’s why I only date Tauruses’ and getting millions of hits.”

Yen has butt-accepted his call.

On the phone, Jaskier hears someone else laugh, rich and warm and absolutely entertained by Yennefer’s breakdown. “Does it make the situation better if those YouTubers aren’t selling anything? What if the only thing their audiences are getting out of it are entertainment?”

“Tissaia, the YouTubers are selling the videos themselves. Content farms translate into cash, and what impact does it make on the audience except to try and live up to stereotypes?”

Jaskier hears Tissaia chuckle again. She says, “Hey, can we figure out bowling before we shit on YouTubers who live in LA and dye their hair blond and break down the signs in their vids?”

“Right, we gotta reserve the tickets. They’ll definitely sell out; I don’t think we’re the only ones that need to go out before the Homecoming dance. Are we reserving tickets or, like, bowling shoes? I don’t know how bowling works.”

“I guess we’ll find out. We’re getting a bowling lane for three, right?”

“Yep. Jas is coming. Well. I didn’t ask him, but he seems pretty lonely, so I think it’s best if he comes along.”

Jaskier scoffs. He is _not_ pretty lonely. He has Geralt, who he talks to almost daily, and he has the Wisher. Who more could he want?

Jaskier thinks about it for a full second and fills in the blank with _A group of friends he can be himself around, who enjoy his presence and don’t only exist online_. Right. Okay. Thank you to his own brain for calling him out like that.

Jaskier turns to Geralt and starts to say, “Do you know what Yen is saying about me…”

Geralt, who has large Bluetooth headphones on now, is in the middle of a yawn, raising his arms high above himself and exposing a strip of skin at his waist as he stretches. Jaskier’s mouth waters a little bit.

Jaskier can’t stop looking at the way Geralt’s hip jut disappears into his pants, the outline of soft hair also drawing his eye down. There’s something about the sculpt of his abs that is familiar to Jaskier, but he’s definitely Googled a lot of muscular guys on the internet after receiving the Wisher’s nudes, so nothing specific is coming to mind right now.

He looks back up and Geralt has caught his eyes. Jaskier wants to look away, but Geralt reaches up and takes off his headphones.

“Were you saying something?”

Jaskier’s mind blanks. How can he explain that he was just checking Geralt out?

In his ear, Yen is saying, “… Pattered bowling balls always seemed a bit gauche to me.”

Jaskier blurts out, “Do you want to come bowling with me before Homecoming?”

On his phone, Yen pauses, and says, very loudly and very audibly through the phone speakers, “Did you just invite your roommate to our threesome?”

Geralt’s eyes bug out a little.

Over the phone, Tissaia says flatly, “It’s not a threesome.” At the same time, Jaskier shakes his head vigorously and says, “It’s not a threesome.”

Geralt curls his mouth into a smile. “Why don’t I believe you?”

If Geralt likes Yen, and Yen is literally planning bowling as a date with Tissaia, Jaskier can’t actually lead him on. “Sorry if that’s a dealbreaker,” Jaskier says. He’s no longer smiling.

Geralt looks at him with the same stilted expression, as if he is going to say something to Jaskier, but doesn’t know how to make the words come out.

Big mood.

“Geralt, you gotta answer me, you can’t just leave me hanging. I will have eavesdropped for no reason.”

In his ear, Yen says, “You did eavesdrop for no reason. In fact, don’t _bother_ showing up for bowling; if I see you in hell it will be too early to recover from this.”

Geralt just says, “I can come to the bowling not-threesome. I’ll have to leave a little early because I have plans for the dance.”

“Fancy,” Jaskier replies, and he’s also smiling.

Geralt said yes! Geralt will come to bowling! But he has plans for the dance already (of course he does), and this just reminds Jaskier of what he called Yen about in the first place.

Yen says, “Now that that’s settled, I really do have to buy the tickets. Jas, I’ll tall to you later,” and hangs up.

Now he has to figure it out without Yen’s help.

Geralt grunts, “I’m going to dinner. Do you want anything?”

Jaskier shakes his head.

As Geralt packs up and closes the door behind him, Jaskier feels like he’s breathing through stale air, as it packs in his lungs. Shit, he doesn’t want another panic attack. He just wants to write a simple dance invitation to the Wisher.

Jaskier remembers the last time he had an anxiety attack, and he remembers how he—how he _and Geralt_ —solved it. He opens his drawer and roots through the layer of junk that has accumulated in it. He left it here somewhere.

Jaskier finds it and holds up half of the joint triumphantly. If it helped him once before, it can help him once again.

It’s a shame Geralt isn’t here to hold his hand, though.

“Shit,” Jaskier remembers. “We used Geralt’s lighter.”

Geralt has just left the room, and Jaskier eyes Geralt’s desk. As usual, it is fastidiously neat, with his brightly colored succulents perched on the windowsill, a pop of color in the otherwise beige and pastel side of the room.

The lighter has to be in one of the drawers.

Jaskier looks back at the door, but Geralt’s not coming back soon. He can root around it a bit, light the joint, and finish the thing off before Geralt’s decided whether he wants romaine lettuce or quinoa today. It’s fine.

Jaskier nods, psyches himself up, and kneels down in front of the drawers. The lighter is incredibly easy to see, so it shouldn’t be hard, and if Geralt keeps his desk drawers as neat as his desk, it should be immediately available.

Why is Jaskier having such a hard time borrowing something from his roommate?

Because some voice inside of him is insisting, _This isn’t cool of you._ But what’s the alternative—try and compose a request to the Wisher without the use of drugs?

Jaskier opens a desk drawer.

Geralt’s drawers are nowhere near as clean as his desk. The top drawer is filled with junk, and Jaskier opens the other two just to be safe. All of them are similarly unkempt.

“Geralt, I didn’t know about this secret side of you,” Jaskier mutters to himself. Who would have thought there would be a side to Geralt that Jaskier wouldn’t know? He lives with the man, for crying out loud.

Jaskier starts rooting through the junk that is more messy than it needs to be. He finds single unused index cards in every crack of stuff. He works through three separate combs and an open ziplock bag of barrettes that fall further into the corners of the drawer before giving up and going to the next one.

The next drawer seems to be a collection of dirty dishes and clean dishes, in no way separated from each other, with the dirty dishes seeming to infect the clean ones. There are more unused index cards in here as well, for some fucking reason.

Jaskier crosses his fingers and opens the bottom drawer. Amongst a similar collection of hairbands, there is the lighter, situated against an encased oblong item that kind of looks like half of a clarinet. Jaskier grabs the lighter, elated.

He sits against Geralt’s desk drawers, sprawled on the fake linoleum floor, and lights the joint like Geralt showed him how.

Jaskier closes his eyes and rests for a moment, and the moment stretches into an uncountable amount of minutes as he feels his mind soften a bit. Jaskier pulls out his phone and looks at the conversation with the Wisher.

He lights the joint again, thinking. _Wisher, would you mind…_ Nah, that sounds like Jaskier is an inconvenience, and Jaskier is not an inconvenience. He’s getting a fucking BMus in violin performance and he’s going to be the cool member of a progressive heavy metal group one dayand wear bow ties and tweed.

 _Wisher, would you like to…_ That’s more like it. Would he _like_ to. The Wisher is so cool; he likes Jaskier, and he would probably like to go to the dance with him. It’s awesome.

There’s a low beeping noise at the corner of Jaskier’s consciousness, but he can’t seem to focus on it right now. He’s figuring out the message, and that’s all his brain has time for.

 _Wisher, would you like to go to the dance with me?_ He should specify which dance. _Wisher, would you like to go to the Homecoming dance with me?_

Jaskier smiles at it. So simple, yet so effective. In the corner of his mind, the beeping grows louder. Jaskier chews on the remnant of the joint.

There needs to be something to soften the impact of the text. Something that reintroduces Jaskier, as he and the Wisher haven’t talked in at least an hour. Jaskier edits his message, typing at the beginning: _Hey!_

Perfection. It’s great. Jaskier’s finger hovers over the _send_ button. He’s so close.

Someone pounds on the front door and Jaskier’s attention focuses on the room. Suddenly, he can hear the beeping in full effect.

The fire alarm is blaring.

Jaskier looks down at his hand. Smoke wafts up from the joint.

The one thing he forgot to do was cover the fire alarm. Shit.

Outside of the door, he hears another knock and then Geralt say, muffled, “Jaskier, you’d _better_ be evacuated already!”

Jaskier looks down at his hand to the lighter. Shit.

Geralt’s key clinks outside, and the fire alarm continues to blare.

Jaskier throws open the bottom drawer and tries to remember where the lighter went. He places the lighter next to the encased oblong object, and hesitates for a moment. It’s not quite the dimension that half of a clarinet would be. What is it?

Jaskier picks it up, shaking it a little. It doesn’t budge, but it seems heavier than he would expect. This is truly an enigma. The cloth case is tied in a bow at the top, and he takes one end and pulls to open the bow. It kind of works, and Jaskier yanks down the fabric to reveal a very bright, very pink dildo staring back at him.

“Huh,” Jaskier says, as Geralt throws the door open and stumbles to a stop, staring at him.

The dildo, now unconstrained from its case, flops onto Jaskier’s cheek.

“It’s, uh, not what you think,” Jaskier says.

The alarms still blare, and Geralt squints like he can’t hear what Jaskier is saying. So Jaskier tries again, shouting, “It’s _not_ what you _think_!”

Geralt opens his mouth but absolutely no sound comes out. This seems to happen a lot with him.

Jaskier traces Geralt’s gaze and the man is looking directly at the dildo, which is in an interesting proximity to Jaskier’s mouth right now.

“Oh, this?” Jaskier squeaks, and is he flushing because he’s high, because he doesn’t know what is going on right now, or because he’s a little turned on holding Geralt’s dildo? “Ah, I don’t. I don’t know what this is. I’m just going to put this back now.” Jaskier drops the dildo into the opened desk drawer.

Geralt seems to find his footing as the fire alarm continues to blare. “We have to evacuate!” he screams. “You fucking set off the fire alarm!”

Jaskier blinks. “Okay, _rude_ ,” he coughs. “I set off the fire alarm accidentally. Don’t blame the messenger.”

Geralt scoops his succulents into his arms and starts back out to the door.

Jaskier hasn’t moved. His head is too heavy for his body, and he wants to lie down now.

“Jaskier, come _on_!”

“Geral…. go withou me… ‘m tired. Nap. _p._ Time.”

Geralt storms back and motions with his free arm. “We will be talking about your invasion of privacy later.”

Jaskier wraps his hand around Geralt. Geralt’s hand is so smooth for an athlete. Geralt pulls him up to standing with no apparent effort.

Geralt’s face is so close to his own, and Jaskier flushes harder.

Geralt is saying something to him.

Jaskier focuses.

“I’m going to pick you up now,” Geralt says, and his face disappears. A second later, Jaskier feels himself fall over Geralt’s back, and a strong arm wraps around Jaskier’s legs, holding him in a fireman’s carry. Jaskier kind of forgets about time for a minute as Geralt carries him outside, where a gaggle of students stand, and he is placed gently down on the grass.

Geralt sets his succulents down next to Jaskier with equal, if not more, care. He sits down next to Jaskier, and Jaskier leans onto the man for balance. They watch as the fire department arrives.

Jaskier realizes he’s never texted the Wisher, and digs out his phone to press _send_. Somehow, doing it in the middle of all this other shit he caused doesn’t cause him any anxiety, and he pockets the phone confidently.

Jass_Queen (10:01): hey! wisher, would you like to go to the homecoming dance with me?

Now it’s just him and Geralt, sitting on the grass. Jaskier looks to Geralt’s face, and the man does not look back. He just stares straight ahead, stony and unresponsive.

Jaskier wants to apologize. He caused this and they’re probably going to get fined for smoking in the room. Even though Jaskier felt confident sending the message, he’s no longer confident about not being an inconvenience.

Jaskier starts. “Geralt, I—”

“—need to lay down, yeah,” Geralt interrupts. He grips onto Jaskier’s back and lays Jaskier down in the grass. “I was just thinking that. Take a minute before trying to look sober when the cops get here.”

Jaskier nods. Right. Even through all of this, Geralt is looking out for him. He scoots on his side, turning to look at his dorm in the dark. He can still see the cracked window from his first night.

His phone buzzes, and Jaskier pulls it out, focusing his eyes on the blurry notification.

TheWisher (10:04): I’d love to! How did you know? ;)

TheWisher (10:04): We’ll have to figure out a way to identify each other at the dance.

TheWisher (10:05): Matching corsages?

TheWisher (10:05): What kind of corsages would we wear anyways?

Jaskier presses his forehead onto the phone screen. He really, really loves the Wisher.

Jass_Queen (10:07): what about buttercup corsages?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a bit y'all but i'm settling into england rn so i'm having a good time. anyways stream guyliner pt 2 by dorian electra


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Wisher is definitely not a bot. Unless bots have abs that can’t be reverse-searched on Google Images. Does the Internet have the ability to deepfake a dick video? No, right?

Yen emerges out of Jaskier’s closet, throwing her bangled arms in the air. “Ta-da!”

Jaskier leans against his bed and nods solemnly, drawing pretentiousness from somewhere deep within his soul. “The suit is very _It’s The Two-Thousand-And-Oughts and I Have a Black Eyed Peas Song In My Head But I’m Stuck at an Office Function and Can’t Party Like It’s 2008_.”

Yen bares her teeth into a grin and adjusts the collar in the mirror that Jaskier duct-taped to the inside of his closet door. “I know. It’s stunning, right?”

“Just your color,” he admits, brandishing his hand in a chef’s kiss motion. “It looks great on you. But do you know where it would look better?”

“On my floor,” they recite together, nodding in sync, and Yennefer puts her hand up for a high-five as she sits with gusto on the bed.

“Your turn,” she tells him. “Time to get dolled up for bowling.”

“I don’t even know what anyone has worn to go bowling, ever,” Jaskier protests, as he roots around his closet for something not wrinkled. It’s very difficult to find something not wrinkled.

Yen has already collapsed on his bed, pressing his stuffed corgi to her chest. “Do you remember _The Big Lebowski_?”

“Yen, we watched it years ago for class. No, I don’t remember _The Big Lebowski_. No one remembers _The Big Lebowski_. It’s not Nineteen Ninety-Five.”

“Well, _I_ remember that at certain points in the film, they sit at a bar in a bowling arena. Arena? Do you call bowling places arenas?”

Jaskier hums. He can’t wear his green T-shirt. He and Yen will look like two halves of a carrot. “Are they houses? Bowling houses? They’re not bowling houses. I know for sure they’re not bowling houses. No one has ever said the phrase ‘bowling houses’ before as many times as I just have.”

“Do they even have bars at real bowling houses?” Yen asks herself, or maybe directs it at the stuffed corgi. As if Jaskier “Jraskier” Jr. knows anything about the ancient sport. “Huh, maybe Tissaia can get me a vodka cran.”

“You’re not dating Tissaia because she can get you things, right?” Jaskier asks.

He is hit in the side by Jaskier “Jraskier” Jr.

When he glares at Yen, she glares back. Jaskier raises his hands non threateningly. “Just asking.”

“Why, are _you_ sexting the mysterious dude you don’t think I know about, and I quote, ‘to get things’?”

“Touché,” Jaskier mumbles, and no, his cheeks don’t pink at that. Damn. He really thought she didn’t know about the Wisher.

“You really thought I didn’t know about that,” Yennefer guesses.

“You really don’t have to keep dropping knowledge bombs like that. Okay. So you know. Let me pick my bleating heart up from the ground in peace, _please_.”

And now that he’s thinking about it: they have agreed to meet outside the dance in three hours. Three hours! One hundred and eighty minutes. Not nearly enough time for Jaskier to well and truly pick his heart up from the ground and present it like a normal human being.

His feet are clammy even thinking about it now, and he’s thought about it, um, _in detail_ every night before falling asleep for a while. Is he even going to be a functional human tonight? Doubtful.

“Just so you know,” Yen sniffs, but she’s distracted by her Twitter feed and no longer mad at him, “I’m dating Tissaia because she’s the baddest motherfucker in this whole college, and you’re just mad that lover boy is probably a Russian bot or something.”

“I don’t have anything against Russians,” Jaskier says in lieu of an actually good retort.

The Wisher is _definitely_ not a bot. Unless bots have abs that can’t be reverse-searched on Google Images. Does the Internet have the ability to deepfake a dick video? No, right?

Yen speaks up from the bed. “Are you dressed yet? Tissaia’s showing up in a couple minutes.”

Jaskier hadn’t even begun to try and concoct whatever a bowling outfit is. He pokes his head out from the closet. “Do you think I can just wear my Homecoming outfit?”

Yennefer blinks. “Excuse me?”

“I own ‘solo violin concert performance’ attire, which I am using as my Homecoming outfit, and I also own ‘alternative jock’ clothes. Nothing in between.”

“Do you not have a cardigan? Anything orange?”

“Not as orange as your suit.” Nothing could possibly be as orange as Yen’s suit.

“Do you own a shirt that isn’t a T-shirt?”

“Well, actually…”

“And doesn’t have weeb shit on it,” Yen hurriedly adds.

Jaskier flips her off, turning back to his closet.

At the end of the ordeal, he ends up with a very interesting assortment of layers. Maroon slacks, an off-shade brown belt, a long-sleeved shirt that he discovered had a huge stain on the front, so he had added a T-shirt (that didn’t have any weeb shit on it, thank you very much) over that.

Jaskier crosses his arms and stares at himself in the mirror.

Yen wrinkles her nose. “You kinda look like Mikey Way circa 2005.”

“Hey, you approved all of these options,” Jaskier protests.

“Individually,” Yennefer nods, “but then you put all of them together! Whatever. It’s your bed and you’re sleeping in it, sweaty.”

The door opens and Geralt tumbles in, his hair wrapped in a towel, white bathrobe cinched around his waist, shower shoes squelching a little bit of water out on the floor.

“Geralt,” Yen says, “Tissaia is, like, downstairs, right now.”

“Mm-hmm,” Geralt nods, “and I’m, like, no longer covered in mud and sweat, right now.”

Yen turns back to Jaskier. “I’ll wait downstairs. Text you when Tissaia’s here. Make sure he changes into something that doesn’t give me any emo vibes. I’m trying to impress my girlfriend with you too.”

Jaskier mutters her own words back to her, but Yen is already out the door, and it’s just him and Geralt left. Geralt has, by the sound of it, just taken off his only piece of clothing from behind the distinct privacy of an opened closet door. Jaskier can still see a good chunk of his calves beneath it.

A couple seconds of silence follow, and Jaskier shifts on his feet. Since Jaskier got high as all fuck and triggered the fire alarm, costing himself a $500 fine in the process, Geralt’s been a little bit tetchy, a little bit on guard against any other shit Jaskier could pull.

Not that he’s going to pull any other shit! Jaskier is on the up-and-up now. He hasn’t rooted through Geralt’s drawers since that one time he did it and embarrassed himself half to death. He’s practically a saint now.

Jaskier clears his throat. “Um, Geralt, did you want any fashion advice—”

“No,” comes the hoarse voice from behind the closet door. “Just going to wear my Homecoming outfit.”

“Oh?” Jaskier leans on his own closet. “You are going to Homecoming?”

“Yeah,” Geralt muttered, and the towel previously encasing Geralt’s long locks flies over his bed and lands with perfect accuracy over the back of Geralt’s chair. “Are you?”

“Maybe.” Jaskier can’t stop himself smiling with that statement. He’s going to meet a boy at the dance. _He’s going to meet a boy at the dance._ Why is he so giddy? It’s not like he’s never looked forward to something before.

Jaskier opens his phone up again, impulsively. There aren’t any new notifications, but Jaskier navigates to the app anyways, always getting a thrill from older messages the Wisher has sent.

TheWisher (3:05): I can’t believe it’s tonight!

TheWisher (3:06): I keep looking at my carnation from across the room to memorize what it looks like on someone else.

TheWisher (3:06): I obviously can’t get within a foot of everyone who goes to Homecoming to stare at their carnations, so I need to practice how to analyze the crowd for you.

Jass_Queen (3:10): to each their own but i’m definitely staring at everyone at carnation-level until i find you tbh

Jass_Queen (3:11): maybe i’ll find u having memorized your defined pecs idk you can’t prove anything

Geralt finishes toweling off and emerges from his closet with tousled, wet and shiny hair draped casually over his shoulders. He’s wearing clothes that Jaskier thinks could be considered a suit without the jacket, a vest and all—and, as Jaskier travels down Geralt with his eyes, he lands at the flower-pattered Converses Geralt has decided to pair with the piece.

Geralt holds up a hand to prevent Jaskier from commenting. “Give me a break,” he says. “I’m not a real adult. I can do whatever I want.”

“I guess you can go to Homecoming dressed in whatever you like, as long as it covers the indecent bits,” Jaskier says. “I wasn’t going to comment on it.”

Geralt gives him a Look. The Look says: _Sure, Jan._

Jaskier’s phone buzzes and he opens it, hoping to see the Wisher’s name appear on his screen.

Yen The Men(ace) (6:25): SHES HERE

Yen The Men(ace) (6:25): get your asses down here or were leaving w/o u

“Yennefer’s ready,” Jaskier tells Geralt.

Geralt is still looking at his reflection in his own closet mirror, which he actually adhered using double-sided tape instead of duct tape. It’s whatever. Jaskier doesn’t reflect on the fact that his own is slathered in duct tape. “Hmm.”

Jaskier frowns. Isn’t Geralt into Yennefer? Isn’t that why Jaskier accidentally invited him anyways, because of a botched train of thought? “I thought you’d be excited about her.”

Geralt starts brushing the nonexistent knots out of his hair. He squints at Jaskier. “I’m excited to go bowling,” he says slowly.

“Right.” There’s so much in that response left unsaid, so much hanging in the room.

Geralt inhales extremely loudly, as if telegraphing his next sentence. “I’m…glad you’re excited for Yennefer to be there.”

Jaskier smiles tightly. He wished this wasn’t typical of their interactions after Jaskier ~~broke the window, embarrassed Geralt by association, took out his dildo without permission and placed it very close to his face when caught~~ set off the fire alarm, but it was. Both of them seem fine with the possibility of not understanding each other, and Jaskier hates it.

But it’s his fault.

As Jaskier exits the dorm building, Geralt slamming the door behind him, the lone car in the driveway honks at them, and Tissaia rolls the driver’s window down. She stares at both of them, visibly calm, and through her window, ahand sticks out.

Yennefer, in the passenger seat, is leaning over and waving her hand in a manner eerily reminiscent of John Mulaney’s _New in Town_ rendering of what to do after punching out a taillight while kidnapped.

Jaskier high-fives her outstretched hand.

“Get in the car, losers,” Yen yells, victorious in the crisp dusk air, “we’re going _bowling_!”

Jaskier seatbelts himself into his seat. He was under the impression before entering that there were a lot less crumpled clothes in the backseat of Tissaia’s car than there seem to be. From her cool exterior, Jaskier had imagined that her car and dorm room would be cut directly from the catalog of whatever expensive dorm room decor company partnered with the university to give students ten percent off, like, $200 for a duvet.

Guess she’s human after all.

Geralt seatbelts himself in the other seat in the back, and together they come to the same realization at the same time. Their outer thighs are touching.

As the car lurches to a start, Tissaia waves her hand at them and says, “Feel free to move my shit to get comfortable,” but there’s no way Jaskier can justify moving Tissaia’s wrinkled clothing to form a barrier between their thighs.

Jaskier takes a deep breath and steels himself. He can keep prolonged physical contact with Geralt. It would be immensely easier if he didn’t feel the man’s defined thigh muscles through the tight black pants.

Jaskier stares at the back of Yennefer’s cleanly cut orange suit and prays to God that Geralt isn’t going to no homo the moment. Jaskier prays that _he_ isn’t going to somehow no homo the moment; just because he’s not in a a great place with his roommate doesn’t mean he’s going to no homo this. That would be literally the worst response to it.

So Jaskier keeps his mouth shut and stares straight ahead, and Geralt keeps his mouth shut and stares straight ahead, and in the front seat, Yennefer tries to describe the experimental Shakespeare film of the _Tempest_ she had to watch for class: “There was an extended shot of a naked child peeing— _I’m not kidding, Tissaia_ —on a swing over a pool. Just an extended shot of it!”

“What the fuck does that have to do with the Tempest?” Tissaia reacts to Yennefer’s exuberant charm with a quiet, dry wit, and as Yen gestures so hard she hits the dashboard, Jaskier can see her move her mouth in the slightest smile.

“Nothing! Absolutely nothing! But every character was naked in this film, so that wasn’t really the strange part. The strange part was that the child was _peeing_ into a pool that was used as the set to most of the film! The actual crash of the ship—you know, from the real plot to the _Tempest_ —is performed as a naked full grown human being bobs a toy ship in the pool!”

Jaskier sits in the back seat, hands laced together, outer thigh burning against Geralt’s thigh. If he wasn’t absolutely sure that the only thing out of his mouth would be a squeak, he would definitely have some choice things to say about this fucking film Yen is describing.

He sees Yen glance into the rearview mirror and frown at him in the middle of her reenactment, but he just nods at her.

From the corner of Jaskier’s vision, he sees Geralt staring at him, but he continues to stare straight ahead.

There isn’t a bar at the bowling alley.

Also, side note, it’s taken Jaskier almost two decades of his life to learn that it’s called a bowling _alley_. He’s proud of himself.

“We need a soundtrack,” Yen muses as they exit Tissaia’s car. As soon as Tissaia shifts the car into park, Geralt is halfway out of the door, and Jaskier’s thigh feels less squished but significantly more bare without Geralt’s body heat pressed against it.

He’s fine. He’s fine, he swears.

Jaskier has refreshed his phone half a dozen times by the time the foursome reaches the door of the place, just to see if the Wisher has written him back. There aren’t any new messages, but Jaskier still thinks his last line was baller.

Jass_Queen (3:11): maybe i’ll find u having memorized your defined pecs idk you can’t prove anything

Even as he feels like something maybe has broken between him and his roommate, he can’t stop feeling so absolutely excited about tonight. Whatever bridges are burnt between him and Geralt in this pre-dance bowling excursion, it’s fine, because the Wisher is waiting for him.

Yen elbows him in the side with a certain measure of gentility.

“Hmm?” Jaskier muses, blinking expectantly at her. He’ll stop refreshing the Wisher chat and spend time with his friends, damnit.

“A soundtrack,” Yen says expectantly. “We need one.”

“Oh, and I’m supposed to provide it?” Jaskier slips his arm around Yen’s, teasingly holding onto her elbow like a proper gentleman from the 1850’s.

“You are the music major.”

“Music _performance_ major, sweaty,” Jaskier insists. “I don’t know anything about musicology.”

“Then double major,” Yen shoots back.

“I’m taking nineteen hours a semester until I keel over and die of never doing anything fun. I can’t double major.” Jaskier looks back to his friends, and somehow locks gazes with Geralt. Geralt must have been looking at him the entire speech. Unable to break eye contact, Jaskier fucks up the punchline. “The, um, the English major wants to complain that someone getting an actual real Bachelor’s degree can’t get two of the, um, fake ones.”

Jaskier breaks eye contact to stare at his toes. Nailed it.

“Good one,” Tissaia pipes up, and Yen pats him on the shoulder and also on top of his head.

He tried.

“Hey,” Tissaia says, breaking up the moment, “do we want to bowl with a gutter thingy racking off the sides or throw gutterballs with wanton abandon like real men?”

“The gutter thingy,” Yen says before Tissaia’s even finished her sentence. “Definitely use the gutter thingy.” She reaches out and hooks her own arm around her girlfriend, and there they are in a row, Yen holding onto Tissaia and Jaskier.

Jaskier tucks his head into the crook of Yen’s shoulder, and did he mention that the second-greatest outcome of this semester is that he and Yen have become friends rather than the wild, fish-slapping, frenemies of their youth, and definitely more than the “we’re the only two people from our hometown at college and even though we weren’t super close to begin with, we’re staying in close proximity to maintain a level of nostalgia we never thought possible?” Their friendship is so good now, fam. It’s so good.

He stays there as Tissaia extracts herself, with an apologetic wink, from Yen to go to the counter and check the group in.

Jaskier catches Geralt glaring at him, but not at his eyes; Geralt is staring at the bit of chest hair that his layered shirts moved to uncover. But he’s not looking with any sort of casualty, no—Geralt is glowering.

Jaskier extracts himself from Yen as Tissaia walks back, brandishing the tickets and grooving to the beat of her own music.

He can’t vocalize why, because he doesn’t know what Geralt’s purpose for glowering is, but he didn’t like what Geralt was insinuating. Even though he doesn’t know what Geralt was insinuating.

Yen pushes Jaskier and Geralt through the actual ticket check-in before her, presumably so she can smooch her girlfriend in the privacy of being three steps behind her friends, and Jaskier motions for Geralt to go through the check-in before him.

Geralt wordlessly gestures back at him.

Jaskier gestures back again, louder this time.

Geralt sighs. “Still trying to be close to Yennefer, huh,” he growls, and walks through the check-in.

“What?” Jaskier follows immediately, handing his ticket to the sad man in an off-khaki polo who’s been standing and staring at the party with absolutely no interest since they arrived. “What does that mean? Geralt?”

He has to wait for the man to tear off the end bit of his ticket and hand it back to him, and Geralt has already sat down at their bowling booth (is it called a booth?) by that time. Jaskier has to run through the linoleum aisles to catch up, his sneakers making interesting noises that could absolutely be used as foley for any good Eighties-themed movies.

Geralt’s scrolling through his phone by then.

“Geralt?” Jaskier asks, more quietly, as he sits down in the booth, on the opposite side from Geralt. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

Geralt finishes typing a message on his phone, quits out of it, and stares expectantly at him.

Jaskier doesn’t know what he’s expecting, so he stares back.

“Maybe it’s time we talked,” Geralt says. “We have a couple minutes before Yen waltzes her way over. _With Tissaia_.”

“Okay,” Jaskier frowns. “Of course with Tissaia. Why are you pronouncing that part of the sentence differently?”

Geralt stares at a point on the wall past Jaskier’s shoulder, and Jaskier catches himself off guard by staring at Geralt’s hair that catches the dazzle of the disco ball, which is, for some reason, hanging in this fine establishment.

“Is this about the invasion of privacy?” Jaskier blurts out.

“I don’t know,” Geralt says carefully. “Do you want to talk about that?”

Jaskier clasps his hands, and then unclasps them. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I’ve never volunteered to talk about my fuck ups before.”

Geralt nods. “My succulents did not sustain lasting smoke damage,” he offers. “So there’s that.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Jaskier starts to tap on the side of his knee, keeping time for a beat only present in his head. He wishes Yen was here.

“She is here,” Geralt says, and there’s that bite to his words again. That glare. “With her girlfriend.”

Jaskier looks over the booth to the rest of the bowling alley. “Yeah, I guess they went to the restroom together. They’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”

“Jaskier…” Geralt trails off.

Jaskier doesn’t have a habit of confessing things before people have prodded him to, which usually includes long periods of no contact, but there’s something about this atmosphere, sitting across a faux rubber booth from Geralt, their friends not in sight, that pushes him to do so. “I’m sorry,” he says, “about it. All of it. I really am.”

Geralt doesn’t respond.

“Searching your desk drawers to find a lighter,” Jaskier recaps. “Getting high in our room without permission. Not cracking a window. Not covering the fire alarm.”

Geralt smiles, humorless and razor-sharp, into the palm of his hand as he reaches up and covers his mouth, like he’s physically shielding himself from responding.

“Before that, even,” Jaskier continues. “Absolutely shitting the floor—metaphorically, of course—during orientation. Waking you up in the middle of the night the night before that to get let in instead of calling the campus police number like a normal, rational human being.”

Geralt’s eyes crinkle, and Jaskier can see his dimple, but Geralt still doesn’t make eye contact or respond.

“And, maybe the most egregious one of them all, I’m very, very sorry that I took out your dildo from it’s plush case and held it very close to my face for an extended period of time.” Face burning, Jaskier looks down at his shoes and away from Geralt’s indecipherable expression. “I know I shouldn’t qualify my apology, because it doesn’t matter why I did it, only that I’m not going to do it again, but in my defense, I was very high and didn’t know what it was before it was, like, full-out in my face.”

Geralt starts laughing.

Jaskier smiles, and he guesses that being the butt of the joke isn’t so bad after all when Geralt is full-body rolling with laughter.

If only Geralt could have laughed at him sooner.

“Shit,” Geralt curses to himself, and a smile is still faint on his face. He’s not looking at Jaskier. “That makes it worse.”

Jaskier freezes. “What?”

Geralt twists his head to scan the room again.

“Guess they’re still in the restroom,” Jaskier says. “What do you mean, _that makes it worse_?”

“I didn’t want to confront you,” Geralt starts.

“What the hell does that mean?”

Geralt holds up a hand. “Just, please let me speak.” He takes a deep breath.

Jaskier lets him speak.

Geralt’s face twitches, like the sentence he’s about to say isn’t the one he wanted to say, but it’s coming out anyways and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. “Are you a homewrecker?”

Jaskier blinks. “I—what?”

“Are you trying to be a homewrecker?” Geralt repeats, and now he’s staring at Jaskier, those deep vaguely orange eyes blinking into his soul.

“I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”

“Yennefer has a girlfriend. She’s very blatant about having a girlfriend. So why do _you_ ,” Geralt punches an outstretched finger toward Jaskier to punctuate the point, “keep hitting on her? And incessantly talking about hitting on her?”

“What?”

Geralt continues on, as if once the floodgates of speaking his mind are open, he’s not going to revert to solemn silence again. “I’ve seen you do the winking, and the suggesting, and the—the whatever. I know you are friends, and every time I see you around her y’all just act like friends, but then you talk to me about her, and it’s obvious you’re trying to hit on her.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says, very quiet.

“Yeah,” Geralt says, sitting back in the booth, all his effort taken to say this. “ _Oh_.”

“No,” Jaskier says, and he suddenly gets why Geralt started talking with abandon. As soon as he starts, the words barrel down his throat and out of his mouth. “I am not trying to get in on Yen and Tissaia. What the fuck? Yeah, you saying that I act like just friends with Yen while I’m around her is right, because we are _just friends_. I think—shit, I know that you’re interpreting some things I said to you as me being into Yen, but that is absolutely not true. I said those things because _you_ are into Yen.”

Jaskier sits back, suddenly exhausted as well.

Geralt leans forward in his seat.

Oh god, are they trading energy to argue now?

“Excuse me,” Geralt says quietly, “do you think I am into Yennefer?”

“Yeah,” Jaskier shrugs. “Obviously. What, you didn’t think I would figure it out? We’re on the same page, right? Like, we know what’s going on with each other. Right?”

Geralt sits back in his booth. “Forget it,” he says. “I just—forget it, I can’t. You seriously thought that this entire time, I was into Yennefer?”

“Yes! Of course I did! Why would I think anything differently? You kept doing things!”

“What things?”

Jaskier gestures vaguely and wildly. “You know! Things! The things that make it look like you’re into Yennefer!”

“You’re a dumbass,” Geralt tells him. He starts rooting around, grabbing his keys like he’s packing to leave.

“You can’t leave,” Jaskier tells him, reaching out a hand as Geralt stands. “We haven’t started bowling yet.”

“I can do whatever I goddamn want to.” Geralt snatches his hand away. “And right now I’m going to leave. I have other plans for Homecoming. Other, actual plans, with people who _actually_ like me back.”

“I…what does ‘like me back’ mean?”

“It means,” Geralt shouts, finally losing composure, hands shaking as he pockets his phone and turns to go, “that I’m—that I _was_ —into you. Not Yennefer. You. But I can’t. I just can’t do it. Not anymore.”

Jaskier drops his outstretched hand.

Geralt continues without looking at him. “If you’re going back to the room to get ready for the dance, I’ll be out of your hair by then. Have a good night.”

He strides out of the bowling alley, nearly avoiding running into Yen and Tissaia as they emerge from the restroom. The unconcerned bowling alley employee in his khaki polo doesn’t even blink an eye as Geralt storms out.

Yen jogs over to the bowling booth. “Where did he go?” she says, gesturing to the swinging front door.

Jaskier gingerly tries to pick up the pieces of his shattered soul. “He had to go…prepare for the party. Plans changed. I think.”

Yen frowns after him. “Is he going to be able to get to his party? Tissaia could drive him back; it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“No!” Jaskier says, and the ferocity with which he delivers that line surprises even him. “No,” he says again. “He’ll Uber or something. He’ll be fine.”

Jaskier stares into his duct-taped mirror, shakily wiping the hint of tears from his eyes. Bowling turned out to be the weirdest two hours of compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance he’s experienced since he came out to his mom on his eighteenth birthday before everyone he had ever met in his life jumped out from their hiding places to announce his surprise party.

As promised, the room is devoid of Geralt, and Jaskier is left in this dimly lit dorm room with nothing but his thoughts and the absolute emptiness of Geralt not being there.

He’d checked his phone, of course, as Tissaia drove him back to his dorm, sitting with an empty seat next to him and no thigh pressing against his own. The Wisher had texted him, and it was the one bright spot in the whole evening.

TheWisher (7:45): I really can’t concentrate on the rest of my evening since I’m going to be meeting you!!

Jaskier feels the exact same way. Looking at his phone now, staring at this exact text, he really does start to cry for real—contained sobs that shake his face but don’t heave. He doesn’t have enough energy not currently turning into nervousness for that.

He likes the Wisher a lot, and he’s so excited to meet him, but what happens after he meets him?

What happens when Jaskier comes home?

Jaskier tears off the T-shirt, the long-sleeved shirt, the weird maroon pants, and starts to dress in his one performance outfit, which even has ruffles on the white shirt, complete with a pristine black (snap-on) bowtie.

Jaskier looks back into the duct-taped mirror, and he thinks that even though his eyes are watering, he looks really good.

“You’re a catch,” he tells himself, tears caught in his throat, and has to clear it several times to get a hold of himself. “You’re an absolutely amazing, stunning catch, and the Wisher is lucky to have you.”

Jaskier combs his hair into some semblance of normality that doesn’t resemble a bowl cut. “Tonight is going to be great. You’re going to meet the Wisher, and you’re going to forget about fucking everything up with Geralt.”

Maybe if he repeats it enough times, it will come true.

Jaskier opens his desk drawer and pulls out the bundle of buttercup stems arranged into a corsage. They’ve wilted a little bit, since Jaskier found them on sale several days ago, but he pins them to his coat pocket, and the pop of yellow completes Jaskier’s makeover.

The Uber ride to the dance is absolutely silent. He watches the streetlights change color on the way to the venue, and the driver thankfully doesn’t try to converse.

He gives the driver five stars as he mumbles a thanks and shuts the door. _Great conversation_ , he taps. The driver’s name is apparently Roach, which is very cool of them, Jaskier thinks.

The dance venue is the fucking Museum of Science, because the Homecoming committee are nerds like the rest of the students instead of narcs who care about football. Jaskier remembers that the fact that he can look at cool geological rocks on display while dressed to the nines was heavily featured in the marketing material.

He’s arrived about an hour after the dance has started, so he’s right on time, and there is a throng of people amassed on the steps.

Jaskier recalls that he confidently told the Wisher that, having memorized his pecs, he could use those to search for him, but there is no chance short of hell freezing over he’s actually going to stare at everyone’s boobs until he finds him.

Not as many people are wearing carnations as he thought would be, because it is the twenty-first century and no one has money for that, so Jaskier is really looking at the ten people with small flowers pinned to their coats, none of which are yellow.

Jaskier frowns.

He’s nervous now, grasping onto his phone’s popsocket as his hands start to sweat.

Maybe the Wisher is nearer to the entrance?

Jaskier slowly weaves his way through the mass of corsageless students, who all seem to be laughing very loudly and enjoying themselves as Jaskier’s stomach eats itself in apprehension.

And then Jaskier sees him.

Lounging on the top step of the stairs, directly by the entrance to the museum, is Geralt, idly on his phone.

Jaskier is too close when finally seeing him to duck away, and Geralt catches his eye and stares back as well.

Even though Geralt is wearing the exact same outfit as he did to go bowling, he’s cleaned it up in the hours since he stormed out of the alley. His hair has been pleated nicely in a braid that winds around his shoulder, and, most importantly, he’s changed his shoes from Converse to something in a neutral color.

Geralt notices before he does.

“So,” Jaskier crosses his arms, “guess you didn’t actually have Homecoming plans. Seems like you’re here by yourself.”

Geralt doesn’t respond to Jaskier’s jab, just stares at Jaskier’s pec-level. Shocked.

Jaskier shakes his head. “What? What’s up? What are you doing?”

He looks down at himself, and sees that Geralt is staring directly at his buttercup corsage. “Oh, okay, don’t look at me like that like you’re making fun of me; I actually have a reason to wear this…”

Jaskier looks down at Geralt’s pec-level.

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Oh, _shit_.

“Um, Geralt?” Jaskier clears his throat, voice a couple pitches above his usual register. “Would you mind explaining yourself?”

On Geralt’s own lapel is a fresh, tightly bunched, corsage of buttercups.

Geralt holds a finger out, starting to shake it, but it is trembling, as if his body knows what’s happening before either of them can vocalize it to themselves. “No,” he says. “No, no, you _can’t_ be.”

“ _I_ can’t be?” Jaskier says. “You can’t be!”

“You cannot do this to me,” Geralt repeats. “You can’t do this to me _again_.”

“Again? What are you talking about, _again_? I didn’t do anything. You’re the one who copied me—it was my idea!”

“I will not let you make fun of me again. I will not let you lead me on again,” Geralt is saying, almost babbling, absolutely losing it on the steps to the science museum.

Jaskier steps back and down. His brain has finally caught up. “No,” he says, awe evident on his tone. “Goddamnit. You really are. This really isn’t a sick joke; you _really are_ him.”

Geralt clenches his jaw. “You really are him too, I guess.”

“Of course I am.” Jaskier gets in his face. “ _Of course I am Jass_Queen_ , what are you talking about? It’s literally almost my name.”

“Damnit.” Geralt might be crying. Is Geralt crying? Jaskier can’t tell because tears are definitely staring again in his eyes. “God _fucking_ damnit. I can’t have this conversation with you. You can’t lead me on _twice_.”

Jaskier moves to wipe the tears from his eyes, and his hands are shaking so much that he drops his phone on the ground. He doesn’t even notice, barreling on. “You know what?” He is resolute this time. “Maybe you had the right idea. To leave. I can’t believe this happened to me; I can’t believe it was _you_. And you know what the worst part is?”

Tears rolls down his cheeks, staining his performance outfit. Jaskier extends a finger and jabs it into Geralt’s pecs. “The absolute worst part is I was really into you. As Geralt, and as the Wisher. I was so into you.”

Jaskier stops, holding the one outstretched finger to Geralt. “I was,” he repeats, ”really, _really_ into you. Both of you. So very much. And I’m not sorry about that.”

Jaskier steels himself and says, “But I have to go. I just…I just can’t.”

Geralt reaches out to clasp Jaskier’s wrist, and Jaskier wants to scream, but all he does is whip his arm back. Geralt doesn’t move toward him again.

“Don’t follow me,” Jaskier says, almost in a whisper.

He turns around, looks at the mass of attendees milling in the night, picks a direction, and starts to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yen's bowling outfit inspired by [this video of Anya and Joey drinking Polish remedies (or poison) ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQJIPUAEhqc)
> 
> The Shakespeare film mentioned is Prospero's Books (1991). Don't watch it. It's bad.
> 
> Is the fact that the characters know absolutely zero bowling terminology indicative of the author trying to remember bowling terminology they heard once as a youth? Mayhaps.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I never hated you; I thought you were nerdy and smiled at your computer too much—Geralt, you can’t just keep pressing your dick onto me to get me to finish talking, I swear to God I have things I want to say first.”

The sun finally peeks over the buildings in the distance when Jaskier admits to himself that he probably should have realized he dropped his phone much sooner.

For the first couple of hours, it wasn’t so bad. Jaskier sat ramrod still on a bench in the sprawling park and tried to discern the outline of objects in the darkness, breathing harshly like he has sprinted to catch the bus, except he hasn’t, he’s just been sitting there on the bench, thoughts cycling around in his head.

_Geralt hates me, so…_

So. So then what?

Jaskier rubs his eyes and makes glaring eye contact with a squirrel unfortunate enough to figure out who was making the insane racket right next to its home, and the squirrel reluctantly slinks back up onto the tree.

_Geralt liked me. As the Wisher. He didn’t like me as his roommate, he was really fucking annoyed with me as his roommate, he thought I was hitting on Yennefer, and then—then he started to like me. As his roommate._

_But then I fucked it up by also liking him, also as his roommate, also as the Wisher, and now he hates me. So._

So what?

Jaskier grinds his teeth together.

“Geralt,” he tests out. “I am sorry for the inconvenience into your semester. I will absolutely move out immediately.”

The silence of the very early morning doesn’t give commentary.

“Okay, fuck you too,” he tells it. “I’ve listened to enough horror podcasts to know I don’t have any way to contact anyone _or_ any light, so I’m definitely dying out here, alright? You don’t have to rub that fact in my face. Help me make amends with my roommate. At least,” and his voice breaks, “help me _try_ to make amends with my roommate.”

The silence around him stretches on, but this time it has a little more sorrow in it than hostility. Or maybe Jaskier’s mind is still swirling around _Geralt hates me now_ , and he knows there’s a statement on open communication that could be given about this, but he’s trying.

Sitting on the bench gets to be too much, and Jaskier goes back to wandering, holding the wilting buttercups in his hand as if it’s a lifeline to normalcy. His primary goal is going back to the museum and finding his phone, or finding an employee picking up after a couple thousand college students had a semi-fancy party within spitting distance of the cool museum gemstones and ask them if he could borrow their phone.

“Maybe,” Jaskier muses to himself, “walking up to a night shift guard in the dark and asking for their phone isn’t the best way to approach things.”

And then, of course, he gets lost, and ends up at the edge of the park next to a crosswalk that leads back to several tall buildings, the crosswalk icon glaring red at him, daring him to step across the unoccupied road, but Jaskier isn’t going to get lost further away from his phone, so he starts walking around the perimeter of the park.

His thoughts progress one step, though, as if awarding him for not being a dumbass. _Geralt hates me, so I hate him too._

It’s not really what he wanted the moral of the story to be.

Because he doesn’t hate Geralt.

Jaskier stops, tapping his feet on the ground, nodding to himself. Okay. He doesn’t hate Geralt.

_But I am very, very angry at him, especially for thinking I was trying to get with Yen._

Which is honestly an extremely valid reason for him to be angry.

Jaskier keeps walking around the edge of the park.

So now, if he gets back to the museum and finds his phone, if he someone makes it back to his room, if he confronts Geralt…what is he going to say?

“I’m not starting that conversation with ‘Fuck you for thinking I was crushing on Yen.’ No way.”

Another squirrel narrowly dodges out of the way to avoid getting trampled, and Jaskier apologizes profusely to the squirrel, just in case it serves an old god that’s about to order a hit on him in this very dimly-lit park, and _now_ Jaskier is concerned that he’s been awake so long he’s starting to hallucinate.

Jaskier’s still bowing and scraping in the direction of the squirrel—“Just in case,” he mutters to himself—when he backs into a railing and finds himself on the other side of the steps leading into the museum.

As the sun is starting to rise, the party has been over for a couple of hours, and there are only a couple of patches on the ground where people have spilled their drinks, but everything else seems to have been picked up.

Including Jaskier’s phone.

“Well,” Jaskier says to himself, sitting down hard on the stairs, “that was my last hope.”

He cradles his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, and stares out onto the road in front of him. A couple of cars drive past, and Jaskier silently pours one out for real adults that have to wake up and go to work at this time of the day. No one should be awake at this time of the day.

A motorcycle veers sharply into the cul-de-sac of parking in front of the museum, and it takes until the driver parks the motorcycle and starts walking with purpose directly towards Jaskier for him to realize that the list of people improbably awake at this hour includes him and Tissaia de Vries.

Tissaia stops in front of him, and tugs her helmet off. Underneath the helmet covered in stickers and the leather jacket, she stares at him, not betraying a single emotion.

Jaskier gulps. He has the startling, but true, thought that he’s never spent time with Tissaia by himself before.

Tissaia breaks the silence. “Oh, good. Geralt was about to report you missing. Come on, let’s go.” She turns around and starts stalking back to the motorcycle.

Jaskier scrambles to stand behind her. “I—what? Geralt’s about to report me missing?”

Tissaia pauses. “Yes. You wandered off almost six hours ago. That’s a long time.”

“Did no one think to come after me?” he asks, but Jaskier’s heart is already sinking, already admitting to himself that he is a burden—just like he always feared, just like he always knew.

_Geralt was about to report me missing. Maybe he doesn’t hate me._

“It took an hour or so to figure out you weren’t just ignoring your phone, and you’d actually left it—speaking of which, catch.” Tissaia tosses him something small and square, and Jaskier fumbles with it, catching his phone right before it shatters on the ground.

“Thanks,” he manages. He opens it, and it’s been newly charged, but the screen is in absolute shreds, presumably from dropping it the first time.

He has a collection of unread texts from Geralt, as well as messages from the Wisher. Yen’s called a dozen times.

And that’s it. Those are the only people who cared that he disappeared enough to try and contact him.

And Tissaia, of course, because she’s the one here.

“Well?” Tissaia asks, revving the motorcycle. “You coming?”

“Oh,” Jaskier blinks. “I’ve never ridden a motorcycle before.”

“You’ll learn. Wear this helmet.” Tissaia dangles her own helmet, outstretched before him.

“Are you sure we’ll be okay without you wearing your helmet?” Jaskier asks, sitting unsteadily on the motorcycle behind her.

“It’s a five minute ride back, there’s no one on the roads, and I’m very well-lit, but if it makes you feel better, I’ll go slow for you.”

“Yes, thank you,” Jaskier babbles, placing her helmet on and seeing the edge of a _Bae-Goals_ bagel sticker on his visor.

Tissaia swivels her head to stare at him levelly. “That was a joke. I’m going the speed of traffic because that’s the safest speed at which to go. If I go slow, I’m endangering both of us.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, _‘oh.’_ Hang on.”

Jaskier dutifully holds onto the sides of Tissaia’s leather jacket as she starts the motorcycle and they go altogether too fast on the empty roads, Jaskier’s suit jacket flapping in the wind.

At a red light, they idle, absolutely no other vehicles around them, and Tissaia says suddenly, “Don’t do this again.”

“What?”

“I mean, don’t run off into the forest again, but also don’t piss off Yen like that again.”

Jaskier’s stomach drops. “Yen’s pissed off?”

“Yen’s fucking furious, man. Not—she’s not irreparably pissed off at you. But I would absolutely advise apologizing immediately. She’s been at the heart of this entire manhunt for you.”

Jaskier doesn’t say anything.

“I wanted her to take a break, but she’s spent a significant amount of time calling your music major friends to make sure you haven’t been crashing at their place. I believe she might have turned them against you in the process.”

Jaskier laughs. He can’t help it—Yen has spent so much time caring about him, and Geralt has spent months liking him, _apparently_ , and Jaskier’s just fucked off in a park for a couple of hours, moping.

“Why are you laughing? Last update from her was that someone called—Steel? Stael? Anyways, I was in the room when Yen tried to explain that yes you had run off, and yes she was wondering where you’d gone, and Stael was like: ‘Fuck that guy, he didn’t show at my Halloween murder mystery party dinner,’ and hung up. I thought English majors were weird, but Music majors are on another level.”

“Yeah.” Jaskier chews his lips. “de Stael wanted me to do homework for her Halloween party. In case you couldn’t tell by that insane proposition, she’s a Music Composition major.”

“Of course,” Tissaia says. She might be smiling.

“I think I turned her down pretty nicely, but fuck, there’s like maybe a hundred music students in total, so she’s one percent of all music majors here; I don’t think I can handle her hating me.”

Tissaia rides up to the cul-de-sac entrance to his dorm and turns off the motorcycle. Jaskier can see the shape of his dorm, outlined against the rising sun. In front of the entrance, Yennefer leans against the wall, staring directly at them.

Jaskier wordlessly hands Tissaia his helmet.

“I don’t think you need to worry about de Stael hating you,” Tissaia says, and she is smiling at him.

“Thank you,” he tells her.

“Good luck. Oh—and in case any of the rumors that you are hitting on Yennefer turn out to be true, I’ll be back.”

Jaskier blinks. “Um. I’m not hitting on Yennefer. So. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Jaskier, I _know_ that. It was supposed to be a cool ending line, so you could feel marginally queasy and maybe even properly humble as you face the person who orchestrated your rescue. Please go.”

“Thank you,” Jaskier says again.

Tissaia dons her own helmet and just flips him off as she drives away, then makes a smooching motion towards Yennefer.

Jaskier steels himself and walks down the driveway towards his dorm.

It was about this dark when he first arrived at the beginning of the semester, and almost equally as empty.

He looks up and sees his dorm window, and can make out the cracked windowpane that he’s traced so many times. The light is shining out of the window, illuminating a shadow of a figure.

Geralt is awake.

Jaskier walks toward Yen. “Hey,” he says unsteadily.

Yen glares at him over a cigarette. “Hey, yourself.”

“You’re smoking again?”

“No,” she says, taking a drag.

“Thanks for organizing a manhunt for me. Sorry you had to.”

“Yeah, well, just don’t do it again, okay?”

“Okay.” He doesn’t know what else there is to say.

They exist in silence for a moment, and Yen really takes a look at her cigarette. “Guess I don’t need to self-medicate anymore.” She drops it, crushing it under the heel of her boots.

“You don’t have to litter, either.”

“Are you going to lecture me on littering? Mister I-Fucked-Off-To-Who-Knows-Where-And-Made-My-Friends-Almost-Call-An-Amber-Alert-On-Me?”

“You’re right; I’ll pick it up.”

“It’s still _hot_ —”

Jaskier drops the definitely still-burning cigarette butt and vigorously shakes his hand.

He and Yennefer make eye contact.

“Definitely a bad idea,” he whispers, and just like that, the ice is broken.

Yen slings an arm around his shoulders. “Glad you’re not dead.”

“Glad I’m not dead, too.”

“Don’t do that again, yeah? Because I’m going to have to be the one to break the news to your family, and I don’t want to have to tell them that their precious Julian died.”

“I told you to please stop calling me Jul—”

“And I haven’t been, but I will need to call you Julian if I am to report on your untimely death, so don’t die!” Yennefer finishes, and then offers an unwieldy thumbs-up.

“Yen, you’re a fucking invaluable friend, and I don’t know how to thank you. Please go get some sleep; I think you’re starting to spiral.”

“Oh, absolutely. One more thing.” Yennefer digs around in her pockets. “Some very nice representatives gave this to me as I was leaving the dance. Obviously I have no need for it, but from what Geralt has been incessantly and incomprehensibly texting and telling me for the last six hours, y’all might.” She produces something from her pocket and hands it to Jaskier.

Jaskier stares down at the condom in his hand. “Um, Yen, you might have gotten the wrong idea, but I left the dance because Geralt fucking hates me now.”

Yen is already slinging her backpack over her shoulder and walking away. “Have fun!” she waves at him, and Jaskier is completely alone, clutching a mostly-broken phone and a condom.

He starts the long ascent to room 420.

When he twists the door, it opens smoothly, which is really great for him because he definitely lost his keys at some point between five p.m. and now.

The harsh lights of the dorm are on full blast, and so Jaskier can see every inch of Geralt’s form slouching over on his bed, somewhere between being awake and asleep.

Geralt’s sweating as much as he does returning from a grueling workout, and if this is what someone who has sat in a room for the past several hours during this fiasco looks like, Jaskier does not want to think about how he looks right now. Geralt’s hair is in a strangled ponytail, sticking to the side of his face, and he’s still wearing most of his formal wear, except the suit jacket has been tossed over his desk chair and his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest.

The buttercup corsage is nowhere to be seen.

Jaskier would be lying if he said the sight of Geralt’s curling chest hair didn’t make him weak in the knees, just a little bit.

Geralt blinks himself awake and looks directly at Jaskier.

Jaskier freezes.

“Well,” Geralt says after a long pause, “you can close the door.”

“Right. Yes,” Jaskier agrees, letting the door slam shut behind him. “I can indeed do that.”

So now he’s standing a foot more inside the doorway, but everything else is the same.

Geralt draws his knees up to his chin and stares ahead of himself, vaguely in the direction of Jaskier’s bed. Jaskier looks over to his bed as well, and it’s still decimated from when he and Yen tried to put their conjoined brain cells together to think of his bowling outfit.

That was earlier last night, and yet it seems like a lifetime ago. Jaskier was still checking his phone, hoping for messages from the Wisher, and, well…

He’s sitting in front of Jaskier, hugging his own limbs like a disgruntled cat, and he looks so, so tired.

Before Jaskier knows it, he’s approaching Geralt’s bed, and standing next to him, looking anywhere but at the man.

All of his preparation floods out of him, and Jaskier can’t even remember what concerns he wanted to voice, sitting on that park bench.

“I—I know you probably hate me now,” Jaskier says unsteadily.

Geralt makes a noise, and Jaskier stops. Geralt doesn’t move his gaze, but he cuts back, “I don’t hate you, Jaskier. I’ve never hated you.”

There seems like there’s more to come of this conversation, and, as if on cue, Geralt unfurls himself and stands, flexing his hands out in front of him, almost touching the lapel of Jaskier’s suit. He’s looking at Jaskier now, and his golden eyes burn.

“All those texts,” Geralt continues, “to the Wisher—oh, my roommate isn’t great; oh, I wish I had a single room; oh, _whatever_ —I thought you had a pretty terrible roommate. Turns out it’s me. Who would have thought.”

Jaskier doesn’t say anything—he can’t say anything. What can he say when he wants to say _I misread every situation we’ve been in for the past four months?_

Well, actually, maybe that.

Geralt’s hands are so close to his shoulders, so close to his neck, and that really shouldn’t be the object of Jaskier’s attention right now, but it is.

“Geralt,” Jaskier croaks. Geralt’s hands don’t move. He’ll have to deal, he guesses. “You’re absolutely right, I roasted you to the Wi—well, to you. But I do want to let you know that I thought you were thirsting after Yennefer the whole time, so. That’s on me. I kinda thought you were using me to get into her pants, but now I guess you were using me to get into _my_ pants, so.”

All of those words came out wrong. Kill him. Kill him now.

Geralt’s hands drop back down to his sides. Jaskier’s just sabotaged this entire reunion effort, huh. When Jaskier looks back up to Geralt’s face, around the smudged eyeliner and dark circles under his eyes, Geralt is grinning. Really, truly grinning. “I do have to say,” Geralt chuckles, “you voicing the thought that I might be into Yennefer is so much funnier now than it was the last time around.”

His gut curls a bit at that, or maybe at seeing Geralt’s stray mascara, because this is funny, isn’t it. It’s really fucking funny. “I’ve been sitting on a park bench for a couple of hours,” Jaskier admits, and something coiled within him releases as he takes the situation into account. “The level of fucks I give about this conversation are significantly less than the last time—well, times, I guess. There were two separate conversations. One where you said you were into me and one where I said I was into you. Tensions ran _very_ high for both of those conversations, and I think if we recreate a third conversation like those I might cry.”

“God,” Geralt huffs for air right next to Jaskier’s face, and oh fuck he’s so close, “the way you’re recounting it, too. Fucking hilarious. Do you know what I’ve been doing while you’ve been freezing your ass off on a park bench?”

“Did you think I skipped town? Did you think I know how to skip town?”

“No, no. I’ve been in here, slowly unravelling, having extended conversations with my closet mirror, Snapchat video calling every one of your classmates I can find, completely out of my mind. I don’t know what time of day it is. I really don’t know if I’m hallucinating or not. I’ve reread our conversations so much that it’s all blurring together and all I’m really remembering are your nudes—which, they are _your nudes_. Your nudes. Yours.”

Jaskier’s smiling too. “Why are you going on about my nudes? Your nudes were the obvious winners. Did you watch your own fucking masturbation video? I jerked off to that so many times. Some of those times, you almost came back into the room and caught me. But I guess—I guess it probably wouldn’t have been so bad if you’d caught me after all, right? Winky face.”

Geralt’s so close to him. “Did you just say winky face?” the man laughs in a low rumble, and he’s looking directly at Jaskier’s mouth. His breath is hot on Jaskier’s lip. “Can’t believe I didn’t know who you were before, because you talk just like you text.”

“No capital letters and all,” Jaskier babbles, agreeing. He could just close the gap. He could. He could do it.

Warm hands smooth over Jaskier’s rumpled coat, and there was the contact Jaskier’s been waiting for. He reaches his own hands up to place over Geralt’s, and Geralt hooks a thumb up to hold onto Jaskier’s hands while still sliding slowly down Jaskier’s chest.

“Huh,” Jaskier realizes, because his brain is still hard at work even as his concentration has flattened to nothing but following Geralt’s hands. “I guess when I came back after having taken my nudes the first time, and I saw you jerking it…that was, um, maybe because of me.”

“Jaskier.” Geralt growls his name like a promise. “Are you just now figuring that out? That was maybe the first thing that went through my head when I got back here.”

“Oh yeah?— _Oh_.” Geralt’s hands flick over his nipples, which immediately stiffen at his touch.

Geralt sounds drunk when he says, as if in awe, “That’s what I fucking hoped would happen.” He’s not drunk. He’s entirely sober, and entirely too far apart from Jaskier right now.

“Nngggh,” Jaskier says eloquently. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what you fucking hoped would happen. Definitely what I fucking hoped would happen, too. Do that again. _Shit_.” Geralt’s palms—rough and calloused from years of sports, Jaskier’s brain helpfully tells him—brush over his nipples again, which are peaking against his disheveled shirt. And again, digging into them, circling them, scraping them. Jaskier doesn’t know he’s backing up until his legs touch the edge of Geralt’s bed, and there’s only a second to think that he’s never been on Geralt’s bed before Geralt is gently pushing him down onto the rumpled covers, and they just look at each other.

“Hey, real quick,” Jaskier says, clasping onto Geralt’s hands and feeling him clasp back, “I know that this is the part in the movie where we kiss, but I need to derail it for a second because I do really want to tell you that I’ve never disliked you. There were some moments when I was really fucking embarrassed because I was a dumbass quite a few times at the beginning of the semester, but that was just me reacting badly to myself. Not at you.”

“Only at the beginning of the semester?” Geralt’s mouth curls up.

“Shut up. Shut up! I’m—I had a speech planned; it was mostly preparation for if you hated me, but you don’t, I can see you don’t, wow I can _really_ see you don’t, are you that hard already? Shit.”

Geralt raises an eyebrow and nudges Jaskier’s leg with his hard dick. It’s certainly an effective way of getting Jaskier to power through his speech.

“Okay. Okay. I never hated you; I thought you were nerdy and smiled at your computer too much—Geralt, you can’t just keep pressing your dick onto me to get me to finish talking, I swear to God I have things I want to say first—and that you were always preoccupied with said computer when I was around. Now that I think about it, I was also smiling and typing, to _you_ , on my phone, so. Again, I was a dumbass.”

“Jaskier, I hope you realize,” and Geralt sounds absolutely wrecked, his voice deep and throaty and stuttering all at the same time, “that all of those times you were in the room, I was smiling and writing to you as, well, I guess it’s pronounced ‘Yass Queen’, then? Always pronounced it with a hard ‘J’ in the my head. I really wasn’t ignoring you when you were around, I was just very horny and I was under the impression that you disliked me.”

“Can’t believe it took me until twenty seconds ago to realize that you were just using the desktop app to message as the Wisher. And here I was thinking you just liked writing essays!”

“I prefer messaging on a computer. If I didn’t have autocorrect, our texts would look very similar.”

“They can look similar. I’m okay with them looking similar,” Jaskier protests. “You type like a boomer.”

“No, I type like I’m typing on a computer, because Auto-Capitalize is a necessary evil. Now. Is your speech done?” Geralt’s hands wander to Jaskier’s collar, and there are several buttons to go before he’s even decently undressed.

“One more thing,” Jaskier blurts.

Geralt pauses and waits expectantly.

“In both of the conversations we had yesterday about secretly liking each other, I feel like we were only talking in the past tense. I feel like I was also crying like a baby, but we can gloss over that bit. I don’t really know anything about relationships, but I did just want to let you know that I like you. Present tense.”

He grins, and all of his cards are on the table.

Geralt growls an incoherent noise, and his face is suddenly an inch away from Jaskier, their noses almost touching. “Jaskier, you don’t know how hot you are. I would really like to kiss you now, _present tense as well_.”

“Wait, wait!” Jaskier remembers, clutching at Geralt’s shirt. “One last thing. The real last thing.”

“Jaskier, I’m literally going to die here.” Geralt pokes him in the knee _again_ with his dick.

Jaskier reaches a hand into his pocket and pulls the packet out triumphantly. “Yen gave me a condom!”

Geralt pauses. “Have you had sex before?” he asks.

“Well, not really, no.” Jaskier hopes to high heaven that revelation isn’t going to ruin his chances.

“Then,” Geralt says, taking the condom packet and placing it out of the way, “we’re not going to worry about it. I definitely don’t want to pressure you, Jaskier; I just want you.”

“Yeah,” Jaskier says, and he would have been super happy to (try to) use the condom, but Geralt knows him well enough to know that Jaskier shouldn’t need to want to use the condom. “Besides,” Jaskier adds, blurting it out before he can second-guess himself, “I kind of wanted to see your dildo in action. Um. If that’s. If that’s okay with you.”

“ _Yes,_ ” Geralt gasps, “of course that’s okay with me, but you know what we should be doing now?”

“Hmm? Oh! Kissing. I think we should be kissing now.” Jaskier smiles at Geralt, all teeth, and Geralt finally, finally closes the gap between them and places his mouth on Jaskier, and his hands grasp at Jaskier’s shirt, presumably to unbutton it, but Geralt is uncoordinated when he has his extremely hot mouth on Jaskier’s, eyes lidded, and Jaskier has to waste precious time unbuttoning his own shirt.

By the time he’s gotten to the last button Geralt is kissing his cheek, moving down to the side of his neck, finding a place under his ear and sucking. Someone makes a whining noise—it might even be Jaskier—and his hands shake, he can’t get the last button undone, but Geralt just reaches inside the open flap of his shirt and rubs two pads of his fingers against his nipple, and Jaskier leans back half-against the bed, half-against the cold brick wall, already panting.

“Mmmm,” he says eloquently. “Fuck.”

“Yes, please,” Geralt groans from somewhere around his collarbone.

Hearing Geralt say please turns something on inside Jaskier, and his pants are too tight to be comfortable. Jaskier reaches down, blindly pushing at his clothes to come off, but they don’t move fast enough for him until he feels Geralt hooking his own fingers down and pulling his pants down just enough for his cock to spring out.

“Yours, too,” Jaskier tells him, and wastes no time curling his own hands around Geralt’s extremely muscled hips and dragging his pants down as well. Geralt’s cock immediately curls up toward his stomach, and Geralt’s breathing quickens and his grip in Jaskier’s hair hardens as Jaskier stares him in the eyes, licks his palm, and then reaches out for it.

“C’mon, sit next to me,” Jaskier urges him onto the bed, just holding his dick, and Geralt just nods, easing himself next to Jaskier, his hand still tangled in Jaskier’s hair, just looking at him. Drinking him in.

Jaskier leans in closer, covers Geralt’s mouth with a kiss, and as Geralt leans back in and they start to suck, Jaskier pumps up and down. In his mouth, he hears Geralt moan, and if that isn’t hot enough, Geralt’s knee bumps his own and Jaskier looks down to see Geralt fucking spreading his thighs. So Jaskier pumps up and down again, and again, and Geralt leans over to kiss him, to scrape his teeth over his lip, to laugh into his mouth, to gasp and tug every time Jaskier slides a finger over the head.

Jaskier could get used to the rhythm, still mostly clothed and disheveled, and Geralt is moaning deliciously from Jaskier just stroking him, and then Jaskier opens his eyes to see Geralt’s hair, cascading down behind him, and Jaskier can’t _not_ tangle his fingers in it and pull, can he?

As he brushes his free hand across the back of Geralt’s scalp, Geralt opens his eyes and looks at him, pulling off of him for a moment and panting, mouth open and wet with saliva. “If you start pulling on my hair, this is going to be over very quickly.”

“What if I want it to be over very quickly?” Jaskier shoots back. He can imagine it now—Geralt’s neck tilted gloriously back, bare and heaving, shuddering as he comes into Jaskier’s hand, relentless and pounding back and forth.

Geralt moves Jaskier’s hand off his cock. “You wanted me to show you what my dildo can do, right?” he says, and fuck, Jaskier almost forgot.

Jaskier nods.

“So, if you want to do that, you gotta give me a break. Just a quick one. But…” Geralt’s smiling at him now, and he dives in for a kiss, furious and inspired, before breaking back and saying, “if you want to pull on my hair for a bit, I know how I can spend that break.”

And then he slides off the bed and drops to his knees in one absolutely stunning moment.

Jaskier is leaking precome before Geralt can wrestle his pants all the way off, so he’s just sitting on Geralt’s bed, looking at Geralt’s face, which is absolutely wrecked and excited.

Geralt crawls his way forward on his knees, not breaking eye contact as he moves Jaskier’s legs apart and stops, inches away from Jaskier’s cock, just hovering there, grinning.

“Pull your hair, you said?” Jaskier asks in a daze.

“Please,” Geralt says, and that sends a wave crashing over Jaskier. He grins. “Oh, do you like it when I say _please?_ Please pull my hair, Jaskier, while I deepthroat you. Pull as hard as you’d like.”

“Fuck,” Jaskier breathes, and like that, Geralt has wrapped his fingers around the base of Jaskier’s cock, and lolls a tongue over the fat head as it drips a bit. Jaskier threads his hands in Geralt’s hair and tests it out, tugging gently, and Geralt looks him directly in the eyes as he opens his mouth and takes Jaskier in his throat.

Jaskier clenches onto Geralt’s hair, struggling to regain his breath, and Geralt pants around his dick, stuttered breathing that envelops his cock, and Jaskier takes another liberty and _pulls_ , dragging Geralt’s nose into his pubic hair, feeling himself bottom out as easily as fucking his own hand.

Jaskier’s definitely not controlling the things coming out of his mouth right now. “Fuck, Geralt, you look so good like this. Strung up on my cock. Holy shit. Are you gagging? Yes. Move up and down. Oh my god. Wait, can I pull you off and then push you back down?”

Geralt makes a noise at that, vigorously nodding enough to bounce Jaskier’s cock around, and Jaskier then takes him by the hair and pulls him back, far enough so that his cock slips out of Geralt’s mouth, just hovering there, twitching between Geralt’s parted mouth, slick with spit and precome, _Jaskier’s_ _precome_ , and Jaskier stifles a moan as he pushes the back of Geralt’s head so that the man slides back over his cock, gulping down and staying there.

“Shit,” Jaskier breathes, and his balls tense. “Geralt, I’m also going to come if we keep doing this.”

Geralt tries to say something around his cock, and it’s sending fucking amazing signals to Jaskier’s brain right now but he can’t understand him, so Geralt pops off and says, voice gravelly, “Fucking a dildo into my ass doesn’t require you to not have come.”

Jaskier almost blacks out. “Yeah,” he manages to agree.

“So,” Geralt licks a stripe down the side of his cock, “I kind of want you to come in my throat. Please. Please, Jaskier, please come down my throat.”

“You did not have to ask twice,” Jaskier gasps, and shoves Geralt back down onto his cock. This time, Jaskier fisted around his hair, he starts to bob up and down, back and forth, from sucking around the side of the head at the top to nosing himself deeper into the base, and then he does it over and over again, and with every slick sound, brief moan, and low hum around Jaskier’s cock, he gets a bit closer to the edge.

“Geralt,” Jaskier suddenly gasps, “I’m—I’m going to—” He looks at the man, and then makes a decision, deepthroating him so that Geralt has no place to look but up into Jaskier’s face and using a hand to curl around Geralt’s neck as well as his hair, so that as he starts to come, starts to go over the edge, he can feel Geralt’s throat working to suck him and suck him dry.

Jaskier’s grip goes slack as his vision starts to fade, and Geralt pulls himself off of Jaskier’s cock and hovers there for Jaskier’s last ropes of come as they paint his face.

Fucking hell.

They sit there a moment, Jaskier wheezing, watching the come, _his own come_ , drip down Geralt’s cheek.

“You’re fucking brilliant, you know that?” Jaskier gasps.

“Of course I am,” Geralt says, and he’s hoarse in a way Jaskier has never heard before. “Just for you.”

Jaskier pulls him into a semi-standing position, and Geralt immediately leans in for a kiss. Jaskier pulls him down and first licks a stripe of his own come off of Geralt’s cheek, smiling prettily as he makes a show of swallowing it down himself.

“Come here,” Geralt manages, and they’re kissing, Jaskier’s come smearing against his own face, tasting his own come in Geralt’s mouth. Geralt’s pressing against him, too, hard fabric of the man’s clothes too hard against his oversensitive dick, and Geralt’s very obvious cock still rock-hard, still pressed into Jaskier’s mostly-unclothed stomach.

Jaskier brings his knees up around Geralt’s hips, dragging the man onto him, deepening the kiss. Geralt preens, arching into him, and Jaskier’s hands are working as if on autopilot: stripping Geralt out of his buttoned shirt, shucking the last bits of his pants off, until Geralt is completely and utterly naked on top of him, and Jaskier just has to unbutton one more button before his own shirt is off of him.

“Geralt,” Jaskier is moaning. “Fuck, Geralt, hell…”

Geralt’s rutting against his thigh. Jaskier reaches down and strokes it once, almost lazily, and Geralt’s breath stutters to a stop.

“We gotta,” Geralt gasps helpfully. “We gotta. Please, Jas. I need it in me. You don’t even know.”

Jaskier’s mouth is dry. “Where is it?” he asks.

“Same drawer you found it in the first time.”

“Hey, you’re not allowed to be funny, I’m literally dying of orgasming over here.”

“And I’m dying of not orgasming; please just get the dildo, Jaskier.”

Geralt leans back against the bed as Jaskier scrambles to find the dildo. Not being high, it is extremely easy to find the large phallic-shaped object, and Jaskier pulls it out, along with a small bottle of lube. The dildo is as pink as he remembers it, and now it’s a little damp.

“Hey,” Jaskier says, in the most accusing voice he can muster, and he walks back to shake it threateningly at Geralt. “Has this been used recently—” Geralt has already braced himself against the side of the bed, legs spread, and the bottom of the pit in Jaskier’s stomach drops out.

Geralt’s eyes, still gold, are blown and wide and wanting as he manages, “Waiting for you to not be missing got pretty lonely around hour three; don’t worry, I cleaned it. Can you just—just put it in? I’m still loose.”

He’s _still loose_. Jaskier is going to blow a gasket.

He pours what’s probably a normal amount of lube into his hand and slathers it around the dildo like he knows what to do. He doesn’t know what to do, but Geralt is straining against his bed, his gorgeous gigantic biceps holding himself up, and his ass is right there.

Jaskier curls a finger in, just to test, and Geralt pushes against it. Geralt is still loose, and he is still wet as Jaskier pulls it in and out.

Geralt’s shoulders tremble with effort. “Jaskier,” he’s saying. “In. Please. Fuck it in me.”

Jaskier looks down at this pink dildo, the thing he has fantasized about ever since he accidentally grabbed it from the drawer, so long ago. Like he knows what he’s doing, he takes his finger halfway out of Geralt’s pretty hole, holding it open, and pushes the tip of the pink cock inside.

Geralt drops his head and breathes around a low, drawn-out groan, and Jaskier slowly slides it inside him until the pink balls bottom out and Jaskier is left with a hand gripping the magnificent dildo that is all the way inside of Geralt.

He looks up Geralt’s body: taut, waiting, hungry, and follows the lines up to Geralt’s face, and Geralt is staring back at him with an open mouth, hair spread every direction, eyes dark and desperate.

“Well?” Geralt voices.

Jaskier twists the dildo inside of him, watching as Geralt’s ass clenches around the change. “Want me to fuck you?” he says.

Geralt reaches an arm out to hold himself steady against the wall, the other one still gripping his bed, white-knuckled. “Yes.”

“Fuck you hard?” Jaskier asks, moving until he’s behind Geralt, staring at that lovely expanse of skin.

“I—Jaskier, you’re killing me.”

Jaskier leans down to his ear and asks sweetly, “Are you going to come?”

“Yes, Jaskier, I am going to come, you just have to _fuck me_.”

“But are you going to touch yourself?” Jaskier asks. “Or are you going to brace against the wall and come just from the feeling of this in your ass?”

If it’s humanly possible for Geralt’s eyes to get wider, they do, and Geralt leans his head against Jaskier’s, eyes closed. “Yes,” Geralt croaks. “Jaskier, that’s the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m so close, you just need to— _oh_ —”

Jaskier grabs the dildo and pulls it out, relishing the sound, and pushes it back in. Geralt’s head goes slack, and his arm muscles bulge, but true to his word, he doesn’t move to hold his own cock.

As Jaskier fucks the dildo into Geralt, he can see Geralt’s cock, thick and shining, straining against his stomach, leaking onto his abs, and Jaskier can imagine Geralt palming it, but his cock stands by itself, straining and waiting for someone to touch it.

Jaskier snakes his hand around and pinches Geralt’s nipple, and Geralt bucks into his hand, almost as incoherent as Jaskier is, so ready to come.

“Are you going to come?” Jaskier asks in between pounding the pink cock into Geralt’s ass. “You gonna fucking come without being touched, Geralt? Have you thought about this—ever since I pulled this dildo out, ever since I basically slapped myself on the face with it—have you thought about me fucking you with this? I bet this is a better angle than you can get yourself.”

He changes the angle, suddenly, tilting it down to brush against Geralt’s prostate, and he can tell he’s hit it when Geralt seizes up into his hands. “That’s it, Geralt,” Jaskier babbles, and pinches Geralt’s nipple _hard_. “Come for me.”

Geralt shakes in his hand, and Jaskier can see his cock spasm against his stomach and come, completely untouched, and Geralt comes in long ropes, hitting his own neck and streaking it down his chest. Jaskier thinks, _His come and mine are mixed now_ , and even though his own cock is still soft, a thrill of arousal still shoots through him.

Geralt holds onto the wall until his cock twitches and hangs down, spent, and then he collapses onto the bed, rolling onto his side and pulling Jaskier in for a deep, wet kiss.

Jaskier has time to think, _It’s still plugging his ass_ , before Geralt is drawing him down next to him, kissing him, inviting and soft, and then slow and calmly, coming down from his high.

Jaskier’s also recovering from the mind-numbing amount of activity, and he splays himself against the bed, just breathing deeply as Geralt maneuvers himself so he’s sitting on the bed, smiling at Jaskier.

“The dildo’s still in your ass,” Jaskier notices lazily, starting to yawn.

Geralt gives a wiggle and winks at Jaskier. “Yep,” he says easily, and then follows Jaskier’s lead and yawns. “Gotta keep myself stretched, you know?”

“I don’t know,” Jaskier says, “but that is a very hot thing to say and I am too tired to appreciate it.”

“Come here,” Geralt says, and pulls him to a semi-sitting position next to him. Jaskier leans his head on Geralt’s shoulder. They’re both gross and sticky now, but it’s not like either of them care. He starts to card through Jaskier’s hair, and that’s very sweet of him, except Jaskier is pretty sure his hands are covered in come.

“This kind of reminds me of when you gave me weed,” Jaskier says, letting his eyes close.

“And that kind of reminds me of when you smoked the rest of it and stole my property,” Geralt counters.

“Your property, which is now…” Jaskier yawns again. “…in your ass.”

“Yep.”

“All of that,” Jaskier says, “was extremely good. And I have thoughts for what to do next time.”

“Oh?” Geralt smiles. Jaskier sees him stretch out an extremely athletic leg to kick the light switch next to them, and the room is finally, gloriously bathed in darkness. Jaskier has been awake for so long.

“Yeah.” He drapes an arm around Geralt. “I wanna suck your dick. Maybe put your dick in my ass. Maybe…” Another yawn. “…put my dick and your dildo into your ass together. Well. Maybe not that last one. That didn’t look super easy to do even for the trained professionals who grace our screens.”

Geralt’s smiling into Jaskier’s hair. “I think those ideas sound lovely, and I also think that I want to go to sleep now. It’s been a long night…well, a long semester, really.”

“Yeah. But we figured it out, in the end.”

Geralt laces his fingers with Jaskier’s, and they’re both lying down now, Geralt’s scent on the pillow. Jaskier turns so that he’s curling around Geralt, and Geralt moves an arm so that it slings over Jaskier.

“Who the fuck designed these beds,” Jaskier says after a second.

“I think these _single_ beds were designed for _one_ occupant, Jaskier.”

“Oh, fuck that. I’ll push our beds together if it comes to that, just… later. I’m so tired.”

“Go to sleep,” Geralt says.

Jaskier lies there, basking in the warmth of encasing another person, someone he knows, someone who knows him back.

He remembers his very first night at college, alone and wondering what his adult life would bring, and this here, right now, being squished up against Geralt, is better than anything he could have ever dreamed.

“Hey,” Geralt mumbles into Jaskier’s collarbone. “Just…before I forget. I didn’t tell you back.”

“Hmm?”

“When you said ‘I like you, present tense.’ I don’t think I said it back.”

Jaskier holds his breath.

“I do,” Geralt continues. “Jaskier, I like you, present tense. I don’t give a shit about our awkward first meeting, or your awkward first meeting with the entire student body, or your awkward—”

“I get it,” Jaskier says. “All of my awkward first meetings.”

He can feel Geralt’s face against him, warm and radiant. “I like you, present tense, so, so much,” Geralt says. “Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t,” Jaskier says, and it’s a promise.

They fade off into sleep, not entirely all at once, but quickly enough that Jaskier dreams of being held, of a laughing voice in his ear, and he thinks Geralt might also be dreaming of him.

He fades off into sleep, and he is being held, and he waits to wake up to look into Geralt’s face again.

TheWisher (11:07): Hey do you want anything from IHOP?

TheWisher (11:10): I’ll just get you a lot of everything.

TheWisher (11:15): Just remembered you wanted me to text “like you” so:

TheWisher (11:15): cant wait to see ur lovely face when i wake you up with pancakes! xoxo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to everyone who left kudos and comments throughout this entire fic! y'all are the absolute best
> 
> edit: hey quick q who would be into a continuation focused on yen & tissaia. i don’t have anything planned yet but 👀

**Author's Note:**

> follow my [tumblr](http://www.serenfire.tumblr.com) for more candid observations usually reserved for finsta posts


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